


For Fear

by superwholocked_wizard



Series: For them [2]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Abuse, Amnesia, Angst, Enemies to Friends, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Smut, F/M, Friends to Lovers, I Killed Him, Infinity war?, Jotunn Loki (Marvel), Jotunn | Frost Giant, Loki (Marvel) Needs a Hug, Loki - Freeform, Nightmares, Non Cannon Compliant, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Other, PTSD, Past Abuse, Remember who you are, Retrograde Amnesia, Screaming, Sigyn - Freeform, There is no God, Thor - Freeform, Torture, amnesiac, amnesiac sigyn, angst angst angst, because fuck infinity war, bitches think imma comply with that?, for sex and torture, hah, i don't know her, in the words of mufasa, mentions of abuse, no, past trauma, sigyn has amnesia, sigyn is abused, sigyn is tortured, thats right people, tony stark - Freeform, we gonna have fun, whooooooo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2019-03-14
Packaged: 2019-05-24 02:54:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 26,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14946263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superwholocked_wizard/pseuds/superwholocked_wizard
Summary: Fear is a horrible thing. It constricts your lungs and makes it hard to breath. It beats your heart right out of your chest, makes you unable to scream for help and holds on to you for as long as it can.Cass is all too familiar with this, because of how often fear visits her every night. She dreams of a man she doesn't know, hurting her in ways she didn't think possible. She feels whips, knives and fire and yet in the morning, she wakes with no scars the ability to convince herself it was all just a dream.This starts to change when a man she doesn't know, yet feels like she should recognise, becomes her co-author for a play she's currently writing. There's something about him she feels like she knows, perhaps the sharp cheekbones, or the green eyes, or how every time they touch she somehow knows exactly how he is feeling. Admittedly, the man can be a bit of a prick, and the fact that he keeps calling her the wrong name doesn't exactly help, but the fact that she recognises the name makes it worse, as well as how he keeps dodging her questions every chance he can get.A sequel to: For Pity





	1. Prologue

When asked about fear, many had to take a moment to think about what they considered to be their biggest fear. Perhaps it was heights, or spiders, or ending up in a crowded room with no clothes on. Some people had to take years to realise what their biggest fear was, and even then it was usually because it had been realised. Loki didn’t have to think, didn’t have to take a moment. He felt it every day.

He felt it with every whip on her back, every crack of it whistling through the air. He could hear her screams, her begging. How she screamed for him, for his help, her freedom, for her life in some cases. Her sobs ricocheting off the walls which had previously been stained with his blood, and now with hers. That was his biggest fear and it was present to him every waking moment. He knew what her shaky breaths felt like, how her chest heaved and burnt for breath, how her entire body trembled and shook from fear.

But the worst thing was that after two years, two years of constant pain, diplomatic negotiations and begging even, the pain stopped. 

He woke up, bed sheets tightly wrapped around his waist and sweat coating his skin. There was a jarring emptiness in his mind, where sobs had so well occupied, a painful reassurance of her continued life. There was a horrifying peace, a lack of pain upon his skin which crawled from the feeling of blood sliding down it, but not his. There was nothing.

That was the worse moment of his life.

When he couldn’t hear her, feel her, couldn’t know if she truly was alive or not. After so many days of such intense pain, a lack of pain felt like a nothing. A death. 

When Amora came in the morning, to wake him, the room had been destroyed. The bed was in splinters, completely shattered, every single curtain had been ripped to shreds and the glass shards on the floor were coated with blood which still leaked from Loki’s foot. Tears were still tracking down his face and falling constantly on the dirty floor, which had feathers coating it in almost every conceivable area, the blood standing out clearly on their delicate white. He held his left arm close to his chest, staring at nothing, waiting for some sort of sign that she was well, waited for hope. Waited for fear.


	2. Nightmares

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cass wakes from another nightmare with overwhelming fear taking over her system. She sets out getting ready for a day of work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, here's the first chapter, there ya go have fun
> 
> love ya all, enjoy
> 
> Sophie

_She could feel the whip continuously cracking down upon her back, the vengeful hand of the one wielding it being more brutal than usual. Her skin had been flayed and some parts were simply hanging off of her. The sharp sting rung out through her body clear as day and made her gasp again, her entire body burning with a hatred for the person inflicting this on her once more._

_Again it cracked down upon her, slicing through her already scarred and ruined back, prompting more blood to trickle down from the previously closing wounds on to the ground beneath her, leaking on to her feet and eventually back to what was previously the white clean floor to stain it red._

_She had stopped looking down, she had stopped looking altogether. Both at her attacker and herself, as her ruined state only upset her more. And for that, he had taken what she could look with. If she wasn’t going to use her eyes what was the point in having them working._

_She had stopped screaming, her voice having gone completely raw and cracking. She couldn’t remember who she used to scream for anymore, but still she begged to whomever might be listening to please make it stop in any way. She had stopped letting herself heal over the night, and instead wanted her wounds to fester and rot until the rest of her was gone too, and yet she found she could not go, not when her body was broken, not when her mind was empty and blank, not when she had no more blood to bleed or flesh to strip. She was simply alive and it would seem she would have to remain that way._

_The whip came down again, striking her with renewed fervour as the arm that wielded it swung twice as fast, cracking it down repeatedly and ruthlessly. Again and again it struck her sensitive skin and again and again it sliced through, easily guided by her torturer._

_The whip cracked harshly against one of the many infected wounds, and before she could stop herself a broken sob broke through her cracked lips, echoing around the room. She didn’t need her eyes to see the cruel smile which would now grace her torturer’s lips. She knew the rules. No noise or fear prepare for a worse punishment._

_Which would he go for this time? There were many options, each of which he favoured for different reasons, but only one of those options made her blood freeze in her veins. And as she heard that terrible knife scrape dangerously on the bowl, she knew exactly what she was in for today._

_She heard his steps behind her, soft and almost silent, and yet every shift of his robe made hear breath catch in her throat with fear. She felt the blade press slowly against her shoulder blades, her entire body tensing even though she had yet to feel its effects running through her._

_Instead of cutting in, the torturer started to run the blade down her spine and then back up, waiting simply for her to beg. But she didn’t beg. Begging to him got her nowhere. Begging to whomever was in her head did nothing either. It just made her fearful and weak._

_slowly, he made the knife trace towards her right, playing with the clear ribs which were sticking out after months, possibly years of starvation. And he slid it between them._

_She hissed, jerking away instantly and tensing even more, trying to escape the knife which was now lodged deep within her. Though the movement would only aggravate it more, she tried to push away and jerked, almost demanding that it should be removed._

_That wasn’t what scared her. The knife she could deal with. A thousand knives she would rather deal with than what was about to happen._

_And then it started. The intense burning exactly where the knife had slotted neatly between her ribs. She extreme and inescapable pain which would slowly flow through her and overtake her completely. She bit her lip painfully, tying to distract from what was to come, but all it did was make her bleed to no avail. eventually, she felt the pain grow, as if a melting beneath her skin. It was as if her entire internal was slowly collapsing and melting on itself, like an old plastic toy being burnt and bubbling. She tries to flinch away but it only made the pain worse._

_Tears started streaming from her unseeing eyes, down her ruined and scarred face, before dripping onto the floor below her, as the pain slowly spread across her back, then through her stomach making her gag and wretch._

_And then, she screamed._

Cass woke up with a start, sweat coating her skin as she sat up in her bed. She took in deep breaths as she looked around her room, panic still very present in her as she shook off the effects of the nightmare. Her eyes jerkily surveyed her small room, landing on the chair at her desk which looked slightly like a human form, then to the shirt hanging on her wardrobe knob, then her towel on the wall, then to the door which was tightly shut. then, she sighed and relaxed a little, the panic being slightly sated.

‘It was only a dream’ she told herself, trying to soothe her mind into a calm.

‘Yeah, a fucking realistic one’ her mind shot back snarkily.

Of course she knew that it wasn’t real, that she hadn’t been whipped to shreds by some psycho and that the hadn’t been poisoned, or burnt, or hurt as her overactive imagination enjoyed telling her that she had been. If she had been hurt, there would be scars. 

She swung her legs over the side of her bed, painfully aware of how vulnerable her ankles would be to an attacker, and sprung off it. She padded towards the door and swung it open before walking out towards her kitchen.

She knew it was a dream, but fuck, she also knew she wouldn’t be sleeping tonight. She walked over to her fridge before pulling out the milk, and then turned slowly to grab the cocoa powder.

A small prick of pain made her look down to her wrist, where nothing was present. And yet a small line of discomfort was clear and made her scratch the surrounding area. Damnit, why now? Why every time after a nightmare? She walked towards the freezer and brought out an ice cube, massaging the area and rubbing the cold on it, finding it dulled the pricking just enough.

Cass turned to the digital clock on her microwave and saw it flashing at 1:36. She still had about 5 hours until she had to wake up, but with the adrenaline pumping through her system, Cass was sure that she’d only get about one hours broken sleep if she was lucky.

Instead she turned back to the empty mug and set about making herself some hot chocolate, because damn she was going to need it.

By the time her alarm rang, Cass was already halfway out of the door, dressed and ready for work and carrying her 5th cup of hot chocolate in her flask, and a precarious stack of papers filling one of her two arms. She was fiddling with her phone, trying to turn the alarm off or maybe snooze it, but all she managed to do was drop it on the floor.

“Ugh.” Cass groaned and leaned down, only to have many of the documents slip onto the floor and spread around the corridor outside of her flat. 

“Fuck,” she muttered under her breath, dropping her binder on the floor and launching for her phone, finally turning the alarm off, before trudging around the landing and picking up paper after paper.

One after another, they eventually found their way back into her hand and back on top of her binder. As she went, she grumbled, cursing the paper, her nightmare and her inability to pick up paper without having to basically crumple it in some way.

Every damn day there was something. Yesterday it was her next door neighbour getting into a huge fight with her husband and kicking him out, making him cry outside her door for house without shutting up, the day before it was that one kid who ran past her in the stairway and made her fall down, hurting her knee, and today it was dropping her flask, her papers and just about everything else on her.

Cass collected herself and began skipping down the stairs, trying to make it down as quickly as possible. As she went she heard a couple of doors open, mostly people leaving for work just as she was. Just as she got to the bottom step she almost ran into one of her neighbours head first.

“Wow Cass, coming in like a catastrophe there huh.” The nephew of her neighbour, May, said jokingly.

“Yeah, sorry Peter, in a bit of a rush today.” She replied, skirting around him hoping not to drop anything again. 

“See ya later Cass.” 

“Bye Pete!” She said, picking up her pace to a jog to try and catch the 6:45 train to Broadway.

Her commute to work went off almost without a hitch, all of her papers had decided that staying in her arms was better than sliding all over the floor in the subway, and yet she still felt herself grip them tighter when she was finally off of the claustrophobic coffin she had to take to work everyday. 

Cass wove through the busy streets of New York, praying to whatever deity might be listening that her scripts, piled high in her arms, didn’t fall into the street, or worse down a manhole. As she was walking she felt a shoulder nudge her just a little too aggressively, and one of her particularly large script threatening to tip. Just as she was about to drop everything in her arms against better judgment to retrieve just one script out of instinct, a hand stopped it from tipping.

“Best keep hold of that.” A British voice, prim, proper and clipped like her quipped from somewhere above her, before the hand left her with a newly adjusted script.

“Oh, ok, thank you.” Cass called into the crowd, not sure whom exactly had helped her, but was grateful none the less. She swore she felt some sort of remembrance at that voice, familiarity frustratingly far and out of reach. And yet, she couldn’t place the voice, and so instead of standing in the middle of a crowded street Cass decided that maybe getting to work was slightly important.

With that, she went back to weaving, eventually finding herself in the familiar backstreet leading to the door which only she had a key to. She slipped the key in with much effort, opened the door and slipped into the theatre which she had come to love working at.

She dropped all of the papers and her laptop rather unceremoniously upon her worn desk and took in her small work room. She had thanked the gods she didn’t have to work in the noisy theatre, and had instead taken a small supply closet to refurbish to make it somewhat an office. She clicked her fingers and sat down, bringing out her highlighter and pen, and turning to the first page of her recently printed script.

“Well, time to work.”


	3. Talking to Tony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony tells Cass that she might have to work with someone soon, when writing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YO guess who's out of highschool and trying to get work, ya girl here

Most people associated working at a theatre with complete drama, diva’s and deviation, with nothing getting done unless they were forced to work. Cass associated it with late nights working on scripts, coffee, moments of anxiety or anger which was the main reason for one of the dents in her wall, and of course, the constant sound of show tunes coming out of the Les Miserables cast, reassuring her in her work.

It was hard being a writer, creating entire worlds out of your head and weaving it into a somewhat believable narrative with a bunch of hopefully relatable characters, but it was what she loved doing. Most of her writing was kept inside one of her filing cabinets in the corner of the small room she had come to call home. She would never show anyone, mostly because they were slightly disturbed descriptions of loss and despair, something her therapist said was supposedly healthy with a nervous laugh after reading the stories about murder and hatred.

“Amnesia does funny things to people.” Jane would mumble, trying her best to look somewhat convinced by her own words. 

Right now she was working on a show about a lonely god. It wasn’t something she had ever really decided to turn into a script but eventually, as the story had evolved in her head she had decided it was essential to mark it down on paper, and some lunatic had decided to pay her for it.

“Hey Cass?” Speaking of the lunatic.

“Yeah Tony?” Cass looked up from the evolving script to greet the somewhat eccentric brunette Avenger whom had hired her basically off the bat.

“How’s my favourite writer’s script coming along?” He said, slinking into her office wearing a sly grin and tinted glasses.

“I’m your only writer.”

“True, but stop changing the subject.” He shot, leaning over her desk and looking at the laptop which was sitting in front of her, the cursor hovering above a word with a particularly annoying red line below it.

“Well, its a tragedy for sure, not sure about a happy ending for this one.” She said, reading over the paragraph she had just written, deleting a line and typing it in again, but slightly differently.

“Why always a sad ending Cassie?” Cass sighed and shrugged, saving her progress and closing the laptop, before standing up and going towards the door, with every intention of getting the sugariest snack she could from the cast catering table.

“Well, a happy ending means that there is an ending, and there’s always more of a story than just ‘happily ever after’ isn’t there, thats where Disney gets it wrong.” She said, feeling Tony’s constant yet reassuring presence shadowing her as she walked through the complicated yet familiar maze of the backstage.

“Wow, cynical much?” 

“Nah, realistic.”

“Gross.” Said Tony, catching up to her and keeping in stride. Though Cass was roughly 5’4 she could walk faster than Steve Rogers should she desire, and Tony knew that from personal experience. Always trying to get somewhere fast.

Cass just shrugged, something she found herself doing often in the presence of Tony, who was insistent on questioning her motives, means and reasons for everything. All Cass could do was shrug.

“Another tall dark British stranger as the main character?” Tony nudged her playfully, knowing fully well the answer was obviously yes.

“Well duh, I have a type.”

Tony just smiled and shook his head. The rest of their conversation lulled eventually into a comfortable silence, trying to remember the way to the catering table and eventually finding it and trying to get as much food as possible until the cast found them.

“By the way, speaking of tall, dark and British, we’ve got a new guy coming in, some writer who’s done a couple of productions in the past, mostly unheard of, so play nice.” Tony said, grabbing a particularly sugary donut.

“What does this have to do with me, I’m a writer?” Cass shot back, trying to manoeuvre towards the still steaming crepes.

“Well, he’s here to work with you, on your new script.” Tony said.

Cass froze slightly, feeling a chill climb up her spine. Sure she was good with working with people, hell sometimes she was used to mediate arguments between some of the avengers who came to visit and they all used her name in the fondest of manners, but showing someone her script was usually a strict no-no. She had a process, albeit an odd one, but it worked and it got work done quickly. With someone coming in to interrupt that it would take longer than usual, and that oh so beautiful final product to look forwards to would be so much less satisfying if it wasn’t how she wanted it to be.

“I don’t have a choice do I.” Cass said lowly, trying to keep any sort of negative emotions out of her voice and make the conversation light.

“Well, sure you do, if you want to tell him to fuck off be my guest, just do it nicely.” Cass relaxed slightly, letting her shoulders fall and a breath out that she wasn’t aware she was holding. Working with other people could be a chore, but if iron man himself gives you a free pass to tell em to go fuck themselves well then that made things a little easier. 

“So why exactly am I getting a babysitter?”

“Co-author.”

“Daycare nanny.” Cass said, bringing her now sugared crepe to her lips and taking a crunchy, satisfying bite.

“He’s a guy with a few stories of his own, I know you’re the equivalent of a hermit but hey, sometimes a hermit needs to come out of its shell.”

“Yeah, to get another shell.” Cass shot back.

Tony just sighed and shook his head, taking a bite out of his powdered donut, trying to ignore how quiet Cass had gone. Of course Tony knew how much she disliked working with other people, hell that was why she had her own office, but this was something that needed to be done. If not for everyone else, for her.

Cass was a far cry from what he had expected when he hat first met her. He had expected someone demanding, imposing and very much larger than life, instead he found a girl curled up in a hospital bed, crying because she couldn’t remember anything. Then again he supposed thats how he seemed people saw him as. He had a soft spot for the kid. Always had.

So silence with her is something he tended to hate, mostly because he knew that it was something she used to hide what was bothering her, but also because he had done the same thing when he was upset or unable to express himself.

“Look just, give him a chance before you say no, aight kid?” Cass just sighed and leaned against the table, not being able to think of any way to worm out of the situation.

“Fine, one chance, and if he’s shit i’m kicking his sorry ass out.”

Tony shrugged, knowing full well she was joking but still felt that going along with it would make her more comfortable.

“Alright, thats fair.”

Rather than replying, or quipping about yes of course it was fair, Cass just took another bite of her crepe and nodded slightly, turning back to her little office.

For the rest of the day, Cass was cooped up in her office, trying her best to map out her latest idea. The thing that most people didn’t know about writing stories is that there couldn’t just be one simple arc, it was arcs upon arcs upon arcs, each being solved and unsolved until they contributed to the collective problem. 

And the character’s, the fucking characters.

Chart upon sheet open google docs of descriptions and rewrites of a character’s traits, fears, loves hates and more; at this point Cass could describe her character’s favourite ice cream better than she could describe the plot of her latest script.

The was tapping her pen continuously over her latest sketch, an undisclosed location of soaring wooden ceilings and an unelaborated throne sat above a set of steps. Yet another useless sketch having nothing to do what she was doing, but sometimes sketching helped. 

Her leg was shaking, dangerously close from knocking her 4th cup of coffee off of the table, and her entire body was tensed over amiss pieces of paper which came from neither here nor there. The only real work she had done that day was that she had sketched three locations, one of them completely useless to the script, and two outfits, both of them uselessly elaborate and only serving the purpose of being aesthetically pleasing, but clearly both of them were extremely uncomfortable.

Cass groaned and leaned back into her seat, rubbing her face in her hands and rubbing her eyes tiredly. Maybe another cup of coffee wouldn’t hurt? Nah. Instead, Cass stood and stretched, hearing at least half of the bones in her body popping and welcoming the movement after hours of being stuck in the same position. She gently wove around the small notes that had been thrown around the room whilst she was desperately trying to get ideas down.

She opened the door, pushing a couple of post it notes further into the room so that they didn’t get crushed. I’ll sort that out later, she told herself, knowing fully well they’d probably end up stuck under one of the cabinets for a couple of months.

As soon as the door closed, she made her way towards the auditorium, wanting to listen to the cast rehearse whichever song they had been working on tirelessly that particular day. As she got closer to the double doors which opened up to the seating, she heard it. Instantly, as soon as the first notes of ‘One day more’ began to play, Cass felt her shoulders unwind and her entire body relax. Pro of working in a musical theatre? Hearing the cast sing every day.

As she slowly opened the door, trying to be as quiet as possible, she saw one or two of the actors glance towards her and shoot her a quick smile, before focusing back on the song. They had become used to her daily intrusions by now and had come to enjoy her frequent company.

She slinked slowly to one of the seats at the back of the auditorium and sat, letting the sound wash over her and to allow herself to relax for a few precious moments. Sure she might not sleep tonight, and sure her co-worker might end up being a ginormous douche, but right now her favourite song was being sung live for her, and that was all she needed.


	4. Familiar unfamiliar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whilst very late for work, Cass bumps into someone who is both so frustrating familiar, and yet completely new to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MWAHAHAHA another chapter. Unfortunately I won't be updating this one as frequently as I updated 'For Pity,' but the updates should be weekly around about ish
> 
> Love you all, thanks for reading!!!
> 
> Sophie xxx

Cass sat bolt upright. Her heart was hammering in her chest and again she felt herself being lost to panic. Was she in the theatre? Did she end up falling asleep? No. She remembered the walk home. 

So why was she awake? There had been no nightmare to make her need to open her eyes, nothing scary to make her heart race. There was no reason whatsoever that she was awake. 

Thunk.

Cass felt her entire body tense at the sudden sound, trying hard not to let herself panic too much. So thats why. She had heard someone moving around. where? She had yet to decide. Perhaps it was someone moving in upstairs. Gods she hoped it was someone moving in upstairs. 

“Don’t go and investigate Cass, you know horror movies, only the curious one’s die.” She whispered to herself, pulling the blanket up to her chin and waiting.

Clunk. “Fuck!”

Cass felt herself relax and giggle at the wrongdoings of whomever was moving furniture upstairs. Now that she knew someone wasn’t in her house, she allowed herself to see a shred of hilarity in the pain of the person upstairs. Granted, it generally isn’t nice to laugh at someone being hurt, but if its late and you were sleeping, anything is a free pass.

She heard the sound of furniture scraping the flooring upstairs, making an odd groaning sound as it went, before another moment of silence. Instead of trying to go back to sleep, Cass instead turned towards her phone and turned it on, sighing as she saw a white 2:34am blinking at her. Might as well get up now before the nightmares started again.

She sighed and pulled herself out of bed, trudging through her apartment and slowly turning the hallway light on, pulling out the hot chocolate powder like Cass did every night. By the time the sun rose again, she had fallen into a dreamless slumber once more, only to be disturbed by a phone call.

Cass sat up groggily and grabbed her phone, which was flashing with a particularly bad picture of Tony who was making sure as many chins as possible were visible. She grabbed her phone and pressed the answer button, croaking a small hello into the phone.

“Hey shorty.” Tony said in an annoyingly chirpy voice.

“I’m 5’5, thats average.” Cass said, turning over on her couch.

“Like I said, hey shorty,” Tony quipped, obviously in too good a mood.

“Why are you calling I’m sleeping.”

“No, you’re late.” Tony said, laughing slightly on the other side of the line.

“No, its only,” Cass brought the phone away from her face to look at the time, only to see that it wasn’t before her alarm was supposed to sound, but instead 11am, “SHIT!”

Cass instantly hung up and sprung off of her couch, running towards her bedroom and grabbing her laptop. She didn’t bother with grabbing the spare papers scattered around her bed, instead she stripped off her pyjama shorts and wrestled into some jeans and trainers. She ran through her apartment, grabbing a piece of gum and her phone before sprinting out of her door, quickly locking it behind her.

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.” Cass cursed for every step she missed, shooting down the stairs, trying to get to work as efficiently as she possibly could. Unfortunately, efficient was also partially blind to the looming figure on the stairs which she ran squarely into.

 

Cass felt her body hit his back before she actually registered that there was a genuine human person in front of her, and it took her laptop dropping on the floor to have it hit her that she hat hit into him.

She practically jumped backwards from the force, not quite realising how fast she had been going, and fell backwards on to the floor, completely breathless and momentarily forgetting why she had been in such a hurry.

“Oh dear,” She heard from somewhere above her. A voice that seemed strangely familiar and yet completely new at the exact same time, making her short circuit a little.

Cass looked up to see a pair of crystal blue eyes looking at her, somewhat sympathetically and somewhat taken aback. To be fair, even Cass would be taken aback to a 5’5 woman in a grubby pair of jeans literally barreling into her back. 

She shot up, trying to brush off her clothes and look somewhat human for the poor man she had just hit into, and gave him a very tentative and apologetic smile.

“I am so sorry, its just that I’m late for work and I didn’t see you and-“

“No need to apologise,” He replied in a velvet smooth voice that would have made a Shakespeare actor jealous, “Me moving my furniture till 4am mustn’t have helped.”

“Oh well, no, not really I guess.” Cass mumbled, making her way to her laptop and picking it up, and checking it over to see if there were any broken parts. Nothing thank the gods. “Sorry, mr, but I can’t really stick around and play good neighbour, I swear if this was any other day I would have stayed and chatted but I am literally hours late.”

The man just flashed her a smile and nodded, giving her a quick wave and the signal she needed, before she was bolting back down the stairs. 

All through the subway ride she was tapping her foot, and as she finally made it to the theatre she was looking around nervously for whatever writer was coming in to assist her, and especially for the judgmental tones of Tony Stark. 

It was only when she got into her little cupboard office that she truly relaxed, due to the beautiful sight of no one. No writer, no Stark, no one, just good old crippling loneliness. And so she settled in. Tidied up her den before mr or ms co-writer came along with their judgmental looks and whatever else they were bringing. So many scraps of paper that she had forgotten sparked a lost memory of a story she had began writing that she had forgotten about. One of an orphan, one of a woman who had a crippling amount of power, dangerous to her and her friends, one of a temperamental horse. The only happy ending she could find was one of two best friends, both women, who took on the world together and lived side by side. She wished she had someone like that.

Whilst she was fishing under her filing cabinet for another drawing of a pair of eyes, she heard someone clearing her throat.

Cass jumped and hit her head on one of the draws directly above her, making a sickening thud and a following ‘fuck’ echo around the room. She turned behind her with one hand on her now pained head and the other slowly pushing the draw back into whence it came, to look up and see a very tall Tony looking down on her with a lopsided grin.

“Well fuck you too sunshine.” Cass said sarcastically, still somewhat stunned from her headshot.

“Why, what did I do?” Tony said, still giggling slightly.

“Does Steve know you’re a sadist to your workers?” She shot, standing up and flinching a little at the throbbing her head gave off.

“Yes, but not the reason for my visit, your babysitter is here.” 

Cass felt her breath catch slightly in her throat, and her heart speed up slightly at those words. Gods that early huh. She had hoped the person in question might have just showed up at the end of the day so that she had time to keep her little side projects and slightly worrying stories under wraps, and hopefully at home. But from the growing pile of what she wanted to call ‘crazy,’ clearly that couldn’t be happening today.

“Here as in, present in the building?”

“Yep.”

“In this current moment?” 

“Yep.” 

Cass sighed and flopped into her worn down twirly chair, making it rock back and forth slightly in a comforting manner, or as comforting as could be.

“Can you stall em a little longer?”

“Princess I already gave him the full tour of the building.” Tony shot, giving her foot a little nudge.

“Fuck.” Cass breathed, bringing her hand up to her forehead and sinking further in the chair.

“Look, how abouts we introduce you two outside of the ‘den,’” he said, gesturing around grandly to the mess in the, albeit cleaner, room, “and he gets a somewhat decent first impression of you.”

She nodded vaguely, maybe agreeing, maybe thinking, who knew. She eventually pried herself out of her chair and stood up, brushing her shirt off and straightened her jeans. Considering that Cass was still wearing a snoopy nightshirt as a t-shirt, it wasn’t the best first impression, but oh well.

Deep breath in, deep breath out, open the door and stride outside. 

Of course she hadn’t been expecting the very person she was nervous to meet to be standing right outside her door ready to knock. Just as she did just under an hour ago, she strode into what she assumed was a collar bone. Instead of taking a couple of steps back because of the impact, the person she collided into seemed to be completely used to people barreling straight into them. So much so that all of the impact seemed to make Cass ricochet back on to her floor for the second time today.

“Darling you’re making a habit out of this.” Cass heard a velvet voice, British like hers, chime from above her, making her look up and be greeted by a pair of crystal blue eyes for the second tine today. 

“Oh.” Cass said quietly, trying to ignore the gradual feeling of recognition which was settling deep in her stomach and making her endlessly frustrated.

He offered a hand out, but Cass found herself still standing up by her own means, not completely comfortable with touch even from close friends. Tony could count on one hand the times that Cass had let him touch her, and one of those was when she was drunk and he needed to carry her home.

As she stood up she found she had more time to look at him than this morning, and instead of simply seeing the blue eyes, Cass found her own eyes wandering across the stranger’s face, noticing the smile lines at the corner of his eyes, as well as the sharp curve of his jaw and gentle slope of his nose. All of this accompanied by a white shirt and suite jacket, along with a carefully brushed bun at the back of his head was far more organised and well dressed than Cass was currently feeling. Compared to the Oxford shoes that he was wearing, her trainers felt like rags.

“Sorry I don’t really do the whole,” Cass gestured vaguely, “touching thing.”

A small looked passed his face, somewhat a cross between confusion and despair, before it was completely erased and the nonchalant half-smile was again there. The only difference between the one before and the one after was that the lines around his eyes weren’t as prominent anymore.

“Well, anyway,” Tony said from behind Cass, startling her slightly, “Cass, this is Luke, Luke, meet Cass.” 

Cass gave an awkward wave towards Luke, who was looking at her in the same way that someone would look at the blurb of a book which had previously been badly explained to them, and they only now understood it. He waved back.

“Well, welcome Luke,” Cass said hesitantly, and moved away from the door to let him inside, “here’s the ‘den’.”


	5. Why do you write?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luke, in all his curiosity, decides to ask Cass why she writes, though the answer that he gets it quite a bit more loaded than he'd hoped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WADDUP ya bitch is alive, trying to sort out this mess of a fic. i do have a plot... some of a plot... so we'll all be discovering the plot together, how fun!
> 
> Love you all, enjoy this one
> 
> Sophie xxxx

He was sure that she was completely gone.

Not even five minutes in and he could tell that she had absolutely no clue who he was or why he was here. She even looked nervous to meet him, as if they hadn’t met before. Her name was Cass now, but she was still Sigyn, always would be Sigyn.

There was a way Sigyn was looking at him, like she knew him in every intimate way but had chosen not to acknowledge it. It was as if she truly did recognise him, but she didn’t know from where. It was the most frustrating thing in the world watching her smile at him, yet not the full beaming smile he was used to, but a reserved and tentative smile.

She wasn’t Sigyn anymore. 

She was reserved, quiet and clumsy. She wasn’t a fighter, but a mumbler. She didn’t have the strength she had previously used to hold a whole kingdom above her shoulders, and yet there was still that same spark of freedom firing from her eyes every once and a while. It was her and wasn’t her at exactly the same time.

Writer, he would never had seen her as. Politician maybe, perhaps a high up boss in a company or hell, a CEO if she wanted, but writer? Writing and reading was an escape. So writing was her escape in some way, but what could she possibly be trying to escape?

“Luke?”

He looked up at the sound of her voice. He saw her face. Yet it held a meek expression that he would have never dreamt of Sigyn wearing. 

“Tony said you should read over some of my old material before you got to the whole ‘writing with me’ part, he said it might help?” She was rambling slightly, and he could see a faint shade of blush painting her cheeks delicately. Was she embarrassed of what she was writing?

“Its best if you read it later so you get time to… digest it.” Luke nodded and brought the manuscript into his arms. It was a lot heavier than he had expected, considering Tony had told him to expect roughly 200 pages. 

Looking back up towards her, well not her, but a version of her, he saw Sigyn bite her lip slightly and go round to her seat at her small desk, kicking a couple of sheets of paper underneath it as if trying to make the room tidy. He wanted her to look up. Not to cower behind her hair and nervous smiles, and instead give him the glowing grin she always hid just for him and Amora, but instead it was a little twitch in the left corner of her mouth.

He settled slightly into the beanbag he was sitting on and tapped his finger lightly on the first page of the manuscript, before clearing his throat and readjusting.

“So…” Cass trailed off, taking a pen with a uselessly fluffy mint lid and trailing it on each cheek slowly.

“So,” Luke cleared his throat again, “Writing?”

Cass hummed questioningly, and looked up at him.

“Why writing, every career in the world and you chose this one, why?” It wasn’t said in a condescending tone, more somewhat incredulous but still very much curious.

Cass sighed and sat up, placing both of her palms on the table as if showing she had no weapons upon her. Every move she made was hesitant and quiet, as if she were completely unsure of what she was doing.

“Because,” She began, gently tapping her finger against the desk she was sitting at, “I had amnesia, and waking up with nothing, but knowing with your whole heart that something should be there is terrifying.”

Loki shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

“I had been in that damn coma for 3 months. 3 months of my face being broadcasted on tv, 3 months of lying there with a stupid beeping sound and no one ever came,” She paused and adjusted herself in her chair, “And when you have nothing, you tend to pretend to have something.”

“So, you pretend you’re someone else?” Cass shook her head slightly, leaning backwards.

“I pretend I left someone behind.” She replied, not quite looking Luke in the eye.

Every cell in his body was begging him to tell her. To hold her and explain to her how much she truly had left behind, how Amora had cried and mourned despite her friend still being alive. How he had tried so hard to get her back and how badly it hurt when he had inevitably failed. He wanted to just whisper how much he had missed her, only to her, and how he was so sorry for allowing his problems to become hers.

But if he did it would be no use. She had no memories of him to give her context to his ramblings, so all it would look like would be a mad man begging to no one. Amora was a name that meant nothing to her. Every single explanation he could try and make would mean nothing. Nothing but a reference to a mythology she wouldn’t know. A history she didn’t remember.

“Maybe you did leave someone behind.” He said, not quite to her, or to himself either.

“Yeah well, they didn’t make themselves known so either they’re dead or damn uninterested.” She muttered, bringing her laptop closer to her and trying to become uninvolved in the conversation in some way or another.

She had already thought about this. Cass had already wondered if there was a mother and a father that she had left behind. Maybe she had siblings that she had gone to the cinema with? Maybe a dog, maybe a lover, maybe maybe….

The worse thoughts were about children she might have left behind. What if there was a little girl in a home, crying because mummy didn’t come back? Or a little boy that looked out of a window, waiting for her to walk back to them? These were the worst thoughts to dwell on because they hurt the most to think about. They hurt the most to visualise.

Maybe she had a life behind her. But it didn’t matter anymore. Even if that life was still waiting for her, even if that life missed her, she was here now. She wasn’t some scared girl waking up in an ICU unit, crying because she couldn’t tell the doctors her name. She wasn’t the same person who woke up feeling empty because there was nothing to fill her mind, no memories or names. She was Cass. She had friends, people she loved and cared about. Tony was basically her brother and friend, and he made life more bearable. 

And now, her head wasn’t empty. She had made it full of life in the stories she wrote, the one’s which made her feel like she had something to cling on to reassuringly rather than a blank space someone had left for her. She felt comfort in the words she crafted for herself and for others to read. Though sometimes repetitive, they gave her something to go over and to think about when the nights got long and lonely.

Instead of dwelling on it, Cass threw herself into her work that day, occasionally making conversation with Luke, or Tony who swung by every now and then to make sure that Cass hadn’t murdered her co-worker with her laptop. Granted, she had a couple of bouts of frustration where she may or may not have kicked her desk, but Luke seemed rather unpurturbed by her somewhat violent outbursts.

Cass eventually migrated to the theatre, only because she had decided that she’d had enough of her office and wanted to sit in the expansive space of the theatre’s seating, where the red chairs welcomed her gladly. She sat down gently into one of the many balcony seating areas, pulling out her sketchbook and letting the graphite dance on her paper, before deciding that whatever the graphite had done was horribly out of proportion and rubbed it out. Eventually, the silence had settled around her and she had allowed herself to relax in the routine of sketching before she heard the creaking of the chair beside her and the familliar sigh of Tony.

He didn’t grill her, just allowed her to finish the little study of the stage in front of them before he turned to slowly face her, with one eyebrow cocked dangerously to one side and a completely impassive face.

“What?” Cass said, throwing her hands up exhasperatedly, “What could I have possibly done to deserve that face?”

“Well, I was kinda gonna ask you that.” Tony said, twisting back in his chair and facing the stage again.

Cass just huffed and settled back into her seat, tossing the paper and pencil aside to glare at the set, waiting for Tony to justify himself instead of speaking in riddles like he seemed to so often do. instead, he watched the stage somewhat vacantly, a small smirk making itself known on the corner of his mouth.

Cass tried her best not to look at him, the silence between them becoming progressively heavier and more suffocating. She wanted to turn to him and ask why on earth he was blaming her for something she didn’t even do, but she knew that was giving in. Cass hated giving in, especially to the whiny manchild which was her boss, personal nuisance and only friendly contact on her phone. Eventually she found it to become less like a blanket of silence, and more like being buried alive in it, and so she cracked and turned to him.

“Tony I swear to god I didn’t do anything, I just answered questions.” She said, trying not to sound whiny.

“Aight, what kind of questions?” Tony said, turning back to her. His tone, thankfully wasn’t condescending or accusatory, it was more humoring her.

“Well, he asked me why I was writing, and I told him about the whole amnesia thing and that was it, then we started working, I kicked a desk a couple of times and bish bash bosh now I’m here being grilled by you.” She concluded, folding her arms and turning back to the stage.

“Oh jesus.” Tony said, pulling his nose between his forefinger and his thumb, massaging it gently as if stressed all of a sudden. Then again, Tony was always stressed.

“What? What’s ‘oh jesus’.” Cass asked.

“Just,” Tony stood up, making a gesture for her to stay sat, “Stay here, I’ll be back.”

At that, Tony strode off, leaving Cass sat in the middle of the theatre, alone again, and more confused than she had ever been in a conversation with Tony.


	6. To hear things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony runs off, Cassie follows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, so I'm basically back from the dead. I recently got a job and I'm working to get a bank account and so on and so forth. My shifts are shitty but I have money now which is fun.
> 
> I'm really sorry this chapter is so short, but I couldn't really find a way to progress it, so the next chapter will be longer. I basically thought that this chapter was like a miniscene but thats all
> 
> Love you all and again thank you for reading, I love you all!
> 
> Sophie xxx

He was livid. 

There was no other word to describe it, and not livid at her for not knowing, but enraged at the one that caused her inability to remember. He wanted to march to Asgard with his sword raised and his hands glowing, but he couldn’t. Instead he stayed quiet whilst Cass worked, watching her gently nibble on her thumb in a pensive manner. He watched as she slowly scanned the computer screen in front of her and scrunched her eyebrows slowly whilst thinking, and simply watching her relaxed him slightly.

Sure, it wasn’t Sigyn, but if the silence stretched for long enough, he was sure that he could pretend that it was her that was writing in the same room as him, maybe arranging some meeting or planning what to say to this lord or that lady. He wanted her to stay quiet, so that he could imagine that instead of the timid and small voice that came from Cass, he would hear the confident and often cutting authority of Sigyn which he had so missed for 5 years.

He didn’t want to be angry, he didn’t want to feel this hopeless, helpless and quite frankly useless. He was hoping that maybe, just by seeing him it might spark some element of recognition from her, and that maybe Tony was wrong about her not being as Loki had described, but he was right. The only thing which might indicate some small, maybe impossibly far element of remembrance were the stories she wrote. 

The pictures she drew were fantasised elements of a world she had been made to forget.

“Hey, Darth Vader, you good?” 

He didn’t want to talk to Tony right now, Tony was the one who’d alerted Thor. Tony was the one who had brought him here and let him work with Sigyn, or Cass or whomever she was now. Right now he’d just rather be left alone and think, but knowing Tony that would never happen.

“Is she always adverse to touch, or is that just with me.” He didn’t even look up from the script Cass had given him to acknowledge Tony.

“Always, she’s never liked people touching her. She has nightmares so they might have something to do with that.” Tony said, walking around loki, who was sat on the floor in what seemed to be complete stillness, with only the exception of the gentle rise and fall of his chest. 

Tony walked towards the desk, leafing through small pieces of papers each with different sketches on them. There were some with pools of water, light reflecting off of it eerily, and a figure in a coat with her arms raised as two figures embraced. There was a bed, one which Loki had eventually become familiar with. There were eyes of people she remembered, halls from a half forgotten home, and moments where they should be remembered, but all that was left was forgetting. 

There was the cell.

Sometimes pristine and white, and sometimes covered in blood. Always with two figures, always with her hunched and defeated, whilst some faceless being raised a weapon. There were some iterations where the being was morphed and disfigures into a monster, whip or knife raised in a jagged claw or a formless grip. Sometimes the victim was sprawled on the floor, eyes open and unseeing, and sometimes she was in a corner, trying to hide from what would always find her. Loki didn’t want to look at those drawings, considering the implications of them.

“Maybe something to do with these?” Tony said, picking one up where the victim was staring blankly at nothing, yet looking directly to whomever caught her eye. She was alone in that one, back bloodied and battered.

Loki just shuddered and looked back down at the script in his hand.

Cassie knew she shouldn’t have followed.

She knew she should have just left it as it was, and let Tony storm off to whatever room he had needed to be in so quickly, but the problem with Cassie is that curiosity was innate. She needed to know at all times. The fact that she had been left out of the loop of her own life by amnesia didn’t exactly make her comfortable, and so knowing rather that ignoring was the way she found comfort in things.

Comfort wasn’t very comfortable at the time.

In fact, comfort was kneeling on a hardwood floor and eavesdropping on a conversation she was almost certain concerned her. Though she couldn’t quite make out what was going on, she did occasionally hear rustling of paper. Instead of backing off as some people would, she instead opened the door quietly. There were so many ways she expected the conversation to be going, either with Luke complaining about how she was reserved, or maybe about the cramped office. 

What she didn’t expect was Tony rustling through her drawings, the small pieces of artwork she made when she had nothing else to do. The little sketches from her subconscious that drew themselves. She sat by the door and waited, straining to hear anything she could.

“She remembers,” Luke replied, “Well enough to have lingering trauma, dreams and ideas, but not enough to realise it was real.”


	7. Let her be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of Cassie finding out that, to an extent, 'Luke' knows her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, so i'm hoping to post more regularly than 'whenever i remember i have an ongoing fanfiction' so hopefully it'll be every week at most.
> 
> Thank you all for the congrats on my new job, it was really sweet and made me smile :)
> 
> Here's another chapter for you all, 
> 
> Again, hope you enjoy,
> 
> Sophie

Cass’s mind was reeling. Her breath seemed to be caught in her throat and her entire body refused to move. There was something rooting her to the spot, wether it was shock, or perhaps the need to hear more. Either way, her feet were still and her legs unmoving in any way. Though the two in the room were still talking in a murmur, Cass could not find it in herself to try and listen in any way. Her ears were buzzing with the words that were knocking around in her skull.

“She remembers,” He had said, so confidently, as if he knew himself what had happened and what she was remembering.

“She remembers,” With a lingering melancholy which, if it wasn’t working double time, would probably make her heart hurt from the sorrow of his tone.

“She remembers,” That could only be talking about someone who had forgotten, but seemed to not realise the things they said and the things they did was remembering in a way.

When she finally managed to breath, it came out in short puffs and felt far too lacking in oxygen to count as what would be considered a ‘breath’. Every time she inhaled it was far too shallow, and exhaling too quickly. Nothing was working, her thoughts were jumbled and nothing seemed to make sense. 

She moved without realising she was doing it, her limbs propelling her forwards against her will and shoving her into the room, ignoring the two men giving her shocked looks, before grabbing her bag and running out. She could vaguely hear Tony shouting out her name behind her, following her as she ran, but she didn’t listen. She just ran. It was all too much to process and she didn’t want to think about the very meaning of the words they had said. ‘Trauma’ implied emotional or physical abuse, and she didn’t exactly want to know what sort of abuse she might have been through. Nothing was making sense. 

She got through the subway trip, barely. She made It up her apartment stairs barely. The breaking point came when Peter found her on the landing of her floor, trying to shakily slip a key into her door which refused to go in. She could feel herself almost crying, tears building up behind her eyes and her entire body holding on for just long enough to be able to let her emotions overwhelm her privately. Then she felt a gentle presence behind her.

“Hey,” Peter said gently, careful not to touch her, “Are you ok?”

That was it.

The tears began to fall and her breath began to hitch as every word that had gone through her brain in the train ride home began to make its way past her lips in a blubbering mess. She daren’t look at him, and instead leant against her door and sobbed. Every single emotion and all the confusion, betrayal and hatred for her complete obliviousness spilled out and she cried. She cried and cried and cried as she hadn’t cried since she woke up in hospital. She cried so much that she wasn’t aware Peter’s hand was on her shoulder, until he used it to pull her away from the door and lead her to the stairs.

Instead of leaving her alone in the corridor for everyone to hear, Peter instead lead her up another flight of stairs, into his own apartment and sat her on the sofa, letting her sob into the crook of his neck. Though he was only 15, Peter Parker understood what it was to not be able to stop the tears, and gods knew how much he knew how good It felt to finally let them out.

He didn’t discourage her from crying, instead held on to her, making sure not to hold too tightly in case she wanted to move away. Instead, he rubbed his hand between her shoulder-blades and whispered that everything was alright.

Cass was trying to let him hold her, trying very hard, but even as he was trying to reassure her, all she could feel was that imaginary whip lashing through her skin as he rubbed, and the slicing knives as he hugged. Every touch felt like a horrifying fire, and though he was just trying to help in the only way he knew how, Cass still felt herself pushing away, the tears abated even for just a moment.

“I-I’m so sorry I just can’t- not with touch not with-“ She tried to word it properly, tried to explain why she was causing disappointment to a boy who was only trying to help, but instead her voice came out cracked, ruined and tearful. Again, a new set of sobs came out of her lips. Not for the realisation that someone knew her, from before, and still abandoned her, but for her inability to be able to complete a simple task such as hugging.

‘Trauma,’ They had said. 

“It’s ok,” Peter said, raising his hands in the air as an act of peace in a way, “I’ll go and make you some cocoa.”

She heard him rummaging around in his kitchen as she tried to keep quiet, muffling the small noises that rose up from her throat. Gods she felt so useless. Not even able to hug someone, not even able to a conversation about her without breaking down into tears.

How the hell did Luke know her?

Again another round of questions she didn’t want to think about for fear of more tears, but still her brain dragged her along a rollercoaster ride of bullshit because why not?

He stood there and listened to her talking about abandonment. Heard her talking about how lonely she was and how broken she had been when no one came. He had been in the same room as her for an entire day, and yet he had failed to mention anything whatsoever. 

She wanted to be mad.

She wanted to run to him and shout. Demand to know where the fuck he had been for three years of loneliness and confusion. Where he had been when she woke up alone in a hospital, when she was too afraid to ask the nurses to leave the lights on because she felt like the dark was too much to bear. Where the hell had he been for the panic attacks, the breakdowns and the months where she felt so useless and isolated that sometimes, that knife in her kitchen looked real appealing.

She had lived three years of trying to understand herself, her past, and her entire life with nothing but a head full of empty memories and stories, tried to learn that even though she felt like she was nothing, she was something. So why the fuck did he decide to come back when that had all been sorted out?

Why not at the start.

Had she been there from the start?

Loki’s heart was beating fast, his mouth was dry and he found he couldn’t talk at all. All he had seen was a blur, a specifically Sigyn shaped blur, running though the room after he had revealed that she remembered to Tony, and watched her run out with tears in her eyes.

Dear gods if he hadn’t fucked up before well then now should do it.

He had so many questions that couldn’t be answered. How long had she been there? Did she know he knew her or were her tears from a completely unrelated thing?

Tony walked back in, slightly out of breath from trying to catch up with her.

“You know, for someone who’s 5’5 she’s really fucking fast.”

Loki wanted to reply with some quip, about how heartless Tony was in a situation which required tact and a little bit of empathy, but all he could do was stare at the area which had a person shaped hole in it.

Why was it that it was only in moments of pain that ‘Cass’ became his Sigyn? Why did it have to be that in between two lifetimes, it was the memory of her crying atop a tree which connected the two? Why couldn’t it have been the moment she looked down upon him, his ragged and beaten form in chains and took pity on him. Why not the moment she truly smiled at him, making the whole room light up, or the intense concentration she had when she was reading something compelling. Why not all of these small, beautiful things which made her who she was?

And instead of going after her, making sure she was ok, all he was capable of doing was sitting in shock.

After a moment, he heard Tony speaking, muttering something to himself.

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon.”

He had his phone to his ear and his foot tapping incessantly on the ground, as if he was in a hurry and yet he seemed to be going nowhere in particular.

“Shit, ok hey Cass, its Tony, look I’m just calling to make sure you’re alright,” He said, seemingly frustrated, “You seemed a bit upset, call me back, bye.” 

Tony brought the phone down and hung up, flopping down in the seat behind Cassie’s desk and tapping his finder against it. He looked at his phone again and began typing something into it, seemingly tapping the keys at a pace far too fast to be normal.

Loki didn’t want to wait to see what he was doing.

He stood up and walked out of the door, ignoring Tony’s mutterings, before picking up his belongings and walking for the very door Cassie seemed to have exited from. She had only left maybe 3 minutes before at most, but she had probably already made it to the subway station if she had been running. 

Instead of rushing, Loki took his time. He didn’t want to bump into her and have a confrontation in public, or want to push her emotionally. It was better if she had some time to think instead of being forced into an uncomfortable situation too quickly. And it gave him time to think too.

What to say to her if she asked?

He couldn’t exactly tell her how he knew her, considering the fact that the way he knew her was far from what people here would be called ‘reality.’ There were many ways he could phrase it of course, but most of those ways wouldn’t provide an explanation to why he had been gone for three years. Maybe he could pull it off as ‘I couldn’t find you,’ or something along those lines, but still, it wouldn’t be enough. 

And what to say about the trauma? 

“My adoptive father, your father in law tortured you until you were almost certainly dead, gave you amnesia and dropped you here,” Sounded a bit too unbelievable. There were some times in which the fantasy we adopt sounds more realistic than what actually happened, and this was one of those times.

He would have rung her, or ‘texted’ her as Tony called it, but he didn’t know her phone number. Instead he waited as the subway ran smoothly along its tracks, all the way to the Queens subway station, and then again on foot. His right hand was tracing along the scar, one that ‘Cassie’ should have identically on her own left arm, as if trying to calm himself down, and possibly her. He could feel the rush of emotions almost consuming her, and though it made him worried, he felt a sort of familial safety amongst the mix of madness, giving him some semblance of peace for the moment.

He found the entrance to his, and her building, and began climbing the stairs two at a time. When he passed Cass’s door, he expected to hear something from the inside, and yet all that greeted him was silence. 

“Don’t,” He told himself, “She needs space, wherever she is.”

Instead, he walked on, going up another floor to be treated to the sight of an identical door just above hers. Oh how cruel it had been when he had found out how close she was, and yet so untouchable, both physically and metaphorically. He twisted his key in and went into his apartment, comforted only by the slow warmth that was spreading in his chest, but not his own.

Hot chocolate. She loved it if not for the taste, then for the fact that it left a lingering warmth, filling every cold part of Cassie’s body. First her chest, then seeping to her shoulders, arms and legs. It reminded her to relax and told her that she was entitled to feel warm every once and a while. Or every 5 hours as she liked to take it regularly. 

She had stopped crying, and instead she had small double breath that told her that perhaps she had cried enough for the day. Her eyes were still red and puffy, and there was a fair amount of snot she had wiped away on her sleeve, but overall she felt better than she had earlier. 

Peter was now sat beside her, with the tv playing ‘Empire Strikes Back’ on a low volume and a cup of coffee in his own hands. He wasn’t touching her, as he had earlier in a bid for comfort, but instead had a blanket draped over both of their legs as they lay over opposite ends of the couch. She wanted to ask him but she felt she couldn’t.

There were still questions swirling in her mind, but instead of directly addressing them, she decided to keep them on the down low and write them down later. A list would do better than confusion in her own head.

“Hey,” She looked up at Peter, who was looking over at her kindly, “You ok there?”

Cass nodded and gave him a weak attempt at a smile, which made him shift in his seat and turn towards her.

“No seriously, are you ok? Like I’ve never seen you that bad before.”

“I,” Cass paused, steadying her breath and trying to ignore yet another lump in her throat, “I found out something which was very alarming and hurt me very much, which I have to deal with.”

Peter nodded, as if trying to make her continue. She wanted to tell him, she really did, instead she shook her head and exhaled deeply. She turned back to the television and eventually, felt Peter do the same. 

They watched in silence until there was a rattling on the door, as keys entered the lock and the handle was turned, to reveal a very flustered looking and tired Aunt May, who had a bag full of groceries and her handbag on one arm, and her keys which were now dangling from the door were presumably in her other. She dropped the bags on the counter and flopped on the floor in front of the couch, keeping her eyes glued to the screen. 

Instead of commenting on Cass’ appearance, she instead turned to her and just gave her a small smile, before turning back to the screen. For a moment, she was allowed to ignore all of the swirling thoughts in her head, and being allowed to simply enjoy the moment. Aunt May wasn’t forcing her to talk, Peter wasn’t forcing her to hug, instead they both just let her be.

And so, she let herself be.


	8. Too Late

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cass tries to unwind and sort herself out after an emotional breakdown. She doesn't really know how to handle the questions swirling in her head and so she writes them down. As she does, a sense of peace fills her, one that Loki, in turn feels.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YO
> 
> so, the summary seems all fluffy n shit but lemme tell you WARNING suicide mentions, depression mentions and an emotional breakdown or two.
> 
> Just, ya. 
> 
> this is a bit of a longer chap, so enjoy my lovelies. also, sorry for the possible tears :)))))))))
> 
> Love you all,
> 
> Sophie

Write it down.

She remembered when Tony had told her that whenever she felt overwhelmed, writing down the problem always helped. How having a clear list of whatever was bothering her always made the cluttered mind more manageable. So thats what she did when she got to her apartment. 

As soon as she had locked her door behind her, she walked towards the chest of drawers in the middle of her living room, filled with a random collection of odd pens, Copic marker pens, paints and as always, her favourite ‘Procrastinating’ notebook. Not that she used it to procrastinate, but it literally had the word ‘Procrastinating’ written in gold lettering on a dark turquoise background.

She brought out a pen and sat down on her couch, bringing out her phone from her back pocket and then a pair of earphones to follow. She plugged them in and turned on her phone, only to be greeted with thousands of notifications from Tony.

23 Missed Calls and 17 Texts Messages.

Cass just sighed and pushed past them, found the music app and put on her Chill Playlist and relaxed as ‘Northern Downpour’ by Panic at The Disco made its way through her earphones and right to the stress.

_If all our life is but a dream_

She wrote. 

She wrote down every question she might have, every query and thought which could possibly torment her in that moment. What about Tony, did he know Luke could possibly know her? She wrote it down. What did ‘Trauma’ mean specifically? She wrote it down. 

Why did you leave me alone?

The pen hovered over the blank line which should have written itself, only to find she wasn’t sure if she could allow herself to accept that she still felt so hopelessly alone when surrounded. Maybe she’d write that one later.

_The ink is running towards the page_

She leant back and stretched, finding that hunching her back for so long, and crying for that amount of time might have been bad for her. She wanted to be able to sort out these problems instantly, and get the answers quickly, but all she had was a list of questions. Ones that would need to wait to be answered.

She found herself ignoring the page momentarily, letting the sounds soak away any sort of anxiety that had taken over her. Slowly the song shifted from different artists, until ‘Every Other Freckly’ came on. Peter had chosen that one for her. He loved Alt-J and thought she would too. As it turned out she did.

Did she always like this music?

Write it down.

So again she wrote.

She wasn’t even sure what she was writing anymore, her hand just moved automatically and her brain simply made it do so. She was so lost in PHOX that she wasn’t even sure she was writing coherent words. She just wrote.

Eventually, her hand stopped. Her brain did too. She just stared at a page filled with questions and no immediate answers to abate her frustration. One question caught her eye amongst the mess of insecurity and anxiety. 

“Who was I to you?”

Who was she to him now?

He could hear her door open and close below, she had made it home. Loki let loose a breath he wasn’t even aware he was holding. Sure she had felt safe, but he didn’t truly know until the proof came to him. There were moments when he felt like he could never keep her safe no matter how hard he tried, but as soon as her keys locked her door below him, that feeling was abated.

At least for the moment.

She was frustrated. He could tell because of the small knot in the pit of her stomach which he had become familiar with at this point, but there was also a sense of drive. She wanted to know something. She wanted to do something. Everything pushing her to do something. What exactly, he had no clue, but eventually he felt her settle, and the emotions slow down a little. It was as if there were an infection. She was removing the pus, and letting it air before applying disinfectant. She was trying to heal in a way, in her way.

Loki sat down on the couch Tony had given him, black leather with gold trimmings, and relaxed a little, trying to allow himself to actually have a moment of peace when all the past few years had been chaos. Every moment of every day he had spent worrying about something. Where was she, was she ok? How badly was she hurt and so on. For now, all she was happened to be a floor below him, and somewhat relaxed. 

Loki ran his hands through his hair, letting it out the band which had held it back through the day. It finally set itself loose and cascaded down his shoulders, tickling his cheekbones and the base of his neck as it fell. He wanted to be relaxed, he wanted to be calm, but all he could do was tap his foot absently.

_Move you fool._

He stood, slowly walking around his apartment, tracing the surfaces of the wall and the desk, and the chairs and the drawers and every surface he could find, just to calm his forever beating heart.

_Why are you so worried? She’s right downstairs and you would know if something is wrong._

Loki chuckled at himself, allowing himself to see the irony of the situation.

“You’re closer to her than you have been in 5 years,” He mused to no one in particular, “And yet you’re more nervous that you’ve ever been.”

Loki shook his head absently and fiddled with his own fingers, wringing them together to try and calm himself. He could almost hear Frigga’s disapproval at that.

_Oh Loki,_ She used to say, _to pick up my magic is one thing, but my bad habits?_

_Sorry mother._

He walked towards the room in which he slept. Well, one could hardly call it sleep when all he did was doze, then wake up from nightmares again. The bed wasn’t ornate, the room wasn’t very decorated. All it could be described as was ‘Functional.’

It had a bed, it had a wardrobe, both in a horrid colour Tony called ‘Oak,’ that contrasted dully with the creamy grey of his bedroom walls. It was almost depressing, but he never spent too much time in that room. In fact, he had only moved the bed in there a couple of nights ago. His toe still hurt from that.

He didn’t want to just sit and wait, but as far as he was aware that was all he had done for the past 5 fucking years, so why not wait a little more?

He brought out the phone Tony had let him borrow, swiping to open it and finding tony’s contact. He wasn’t sure what to do and tried fiddling with a couple of buttons to try and ‘Text’ the man, before finally succeeding.

The little line blinked frustratingly at him, telling him how much he had to ask but how badly he was at wording it. When it came to Sigyn, his silver tongue became heavier that lead. 

Blink. Blink. Blink.

Curse that damn line.

He turned off his phone and tossed it in frustration on to the scarcely used bed. He couldn’t just ask Tony about everything, it was his problem, so he had to at least try and solve it himself. He stood, moving about the room trying to find some sort of paper to actually write on, maybe a magazine Tony had left him or even a newspaper. Eventually he found a blank piece of paper in one of the cupboards, wrapping up a cup that hadn’t been used yet.

He unraveled it and brought out a pen from his back pocket. He must have borrowed it from ‘Cass’ because it was a pen with multiple colours which could be interchanged at any time, with a primarily blue design save for a large ‘DW’ styled to look like they were a sort of arrow. He didn’t understand quite what it was supposed to mean, but he just wrote.

Sigyn Fuck no, not that, she wasn’t Sigyn, she was Cass.

He scribbled it out and started again, poising his pen upon the paper and writing.

She didn’t hear the paper sliding slowly under her door, in fact she could barely hear anything. All she could hear was the jarring music coming from her phone. She had now shifted from her chill playlist to the melodic symphony of interstellar. If anything could divorce her from reality and her sheer involvement in it, it was Hans Zimmer and that damned organ that she felt in her very lungs. 

The music crescendo’d, rising through her ears and filling everything she had, letting her relax as it hit, every not perceptible and every time it swelled, another breath was knocked out of her. The organ played like a symphony, sheer passionate sound leaving her breathless and completely trapped in the beautiful jarring melody of it all.

Her eyes were closed, whilst her mouth hung half open as she lay, almost completely motionless on the couch, whilst goosebumps danced across her skin in time with every single bar. Every moment engrossed was another moment of forgetting. 

Cass hated not remembering, but forgetting that she didn’t remember was bliss. It was her heroin. Every time she could just let the music play, and she could just allow herself the ability to be uninvolved in what seemed like a reality created to be her dystopia, was sheer joy. Some people used movies, some people used drugs, some people read books. Cocaine was something, but nothing compared to when the music swelled and when that unbelievable high flooded through her.

It was her drug. Pure and unadulterated. 

Loki didn’t wait at the door for her to answer, hell he didn’t even know whereabouts she was in her apartment, instead he decided to walk further down the hall, and eventually down the stairs onto the empty New York street. He could feel her, still there, but instead of the calm she was in some sort of state of low level euphoria. Her very chest was filled with a fluttering, and every muscle in her body was completely relaxed. Every three minutes or so, he would feel the fluttering get faster, and goosebumps on his arm rising and falling, in an almost rhythmic pattern. If he had been oblivious to such things, he would think she was taking drugs. But he knew drugs, and he knew the withdrawal it caused, the hunger. This wasn’t that sort of drugs. It was just regulated joy.

He didn’t know where he was walking, only that the cold biting of the air felt almost like his true skin. The familiar blue that he hadn’t quite gotten used to, let alone enjoy, and yet reverting back to the false Loki felt wrong. It was like having layers of mud on you for a lifetime, washing it off and getting used to the clean, only to be doused in the dirt and to be left like that. It was an itch he couldn’t physically scratch and yet it was there.

In time he would tell himself, In time you will shed it. In time you can be back to yourself.

The horns were the worst thing. They were there, something that was still present, but simply invisible to the naked eye. Hats were to be avoided if he didn’t want to odd looking spires pointing beneath them with no explanation.

Gods he missed home.

He missed Amora, who would quip at him every time he seemed a little too down. Who would make jokes like ‘Looking a bit blue’ without a hint of irony. He missed Myrkr, who had, in the absence of his mistress, taken a liking to Loki in an oddly hostile yet friendly way. He missed his bed, where he would wake up every morning, thinking that maybe It had all been a bad dream and that when he opened his eyes, the cold spot next to him would be warm again.

He missed _her._

He missed her true joy, and how she would hold her hand against his cheek and tut gently at him with humour in her smile and a gleeful twinkle in her eye. He missed the sheer passion of her emotions, and how unbridled they could be. When she was upset, she screamed and cried and allowed herself to feel, and when she was happy everyone around her was happy too.

He missed how he could kiss her naked shoulder when he woke up in the morning and see her lazy smile slowly waking her lips. Eyes still closed but mouth quirked upwards in a knowing way. He missed the sheer unadulterated her, and how she would force him on a horse he was sure would buck him off if it weren’t for her. He missed how she decided some nights were good for watching the stars instead of sleeping. He missed how she would burn when she raged, how she would show no mercy in anger and how she would fight passionately, wether it were her advisors, Odin or another noble she was against.

Loki pulled at his hair, sniffing and cursing himself every so slightly. That damned woman was going to be the death of him. All this for one person? A few years ago he would have laughed and dismissed his future self, scorning and tearing him apart for his weakness in concern to one person. But if his younger self knew, if only he had seen what he was to go through, and how she had become his very willpower. If only his younger self knew of the lure of permanent rest, and of how easy it was to let go of a branch keeping you alive. If only his younger self knew that Loki no longer lived for himself, and that she was something to live for.

Gods he was a mess wasn’t he. 

Loki brought his sleeve to his eyes and carefully wiped away the tears of frustration that had brimmed over the top. He didn’t want to be crying, but he had been looking for 5 years, and when something has been lost for 5 years, you tend to hope to find it whole, and the same. But instead he found someone else with the face of someone he cared about. Fuck. He knew she was a person, and yes, Cass did have qualities which could be described as endearing, but gods he just wanted to see a Sigyn smile for once. That gorgeous, whole smile which made his heart (cold and Jötun as it was) warm.

He had almost become completely lost in thought when he heard boots scuttling behind him. Instantly every part of him became on alert. 

There was no way anyone could do any true lasting harm to Loki, but harm was still harm in one way or another. And Loki didn’t particularly want his nose kicked in by some Midguardian who would break his whole foot doing it.

He kept walking slowly, keeping his ears strained for any type of movement which could indicate hostility in any way shape or form. All he heard was nothing. 

There was a dangerous stillness that was hanging over him as if it were a knife hung above his head, ready to drop through his neck at moment without warning to him. He heard only the wind, the rustle of the leaves and-

_Thwip!_

There! There was something straining against a weight, a clicking, and the sound of a pair of feet hitting the pavement lightly. Instantly he swivelled around, expecting to see perhaps one of Tony’s armours, or even a pair of well equipped thugs with some sort of unknown technology, and instead he came face to face with… Lycra?

A pair of wide white lenses were staring at him, their very emptiness making Loki’s skin crawl. The rest of the body was covered from head to toe in a Lycra suit, some of which was red and some of which was blue. There was something off about it, about how it cancelled out whatever features one would normally be able to make out from a person. Said person stood to only about Loki’s chin, barely 4 inches taller than Sigyn was. He was looking up at Loki, as if sizing him up in some way. Perhaps to fight him, or to talk. One never knew with people who voluntarily wore a completely body hugging suit in public.

The… man? Woman? Person? The person leant against the wall beside them, with their arms crossed and their ‘eyes’ narrowing, giving him what could be perceived as a threatening or slightly hateful look.

“So, what’s with Cass?” Boy. It was a young boy. 

Loki would have been taken aback by the fact that he was being threatened by a child or some younger level of teenager, if it weren’t for the fact that the boy seemed to have read his mind to a degree.

“Wha- Why do you care?” He replied, slightly defensively.

The boy pushed himself off the wall, and uncrossed his arms.

“Because she’s family. She has nothing but us and though she pretends to be strong she’s really not. And I’d rather she didn’t go through any more crap than necessary.” He said, not bothering to be kind in any way.

“More crap? You sound like a possessive lover.” Loki wanted to find some sort of jaded jealousy rising through his throat, but if he was honest he had expected her to move on by now. All he would have felt would have been disappointment at himself for not finding her sooner.

The kid snorted, no humour finding its way into her voice.

“Nah, far too young. And its not possessive, its making sure your friend is emotionally safe, especially from strange men sliding notes under her door.” He said, gesturing vaguely in Loki’s general direction. "Especially after last time. We almost lost her to herself." The boy said, a sad tone lacing itself through the words making Loki's airways tighten and his entire body feel like it had been sucker punched by Mjolnir.

Instead of staying around long enough to be able to answer any questions, the kid made some sort of an oobleck fluid from his wrists, before pulling himself onto a building, and the another, and then another and then out of sight.

Loki felt a familiar knot in his throat, as well as a stone sinking deeper and deeper in his stomach with the mounting realisation that said friend was the very person he had come to help. No, he didn’t think she would be in the best way, strictly speaking, but suicidal? No. Not Sigyn. Not strong, calm and wild Sigyn. Not Sigyn who could rival a storm without raising a finger. not her. Not the oxymoron who had decided to marry him. Not the woman who had decided to go through one of the most painful rituals in all of history, simply after one night of reflection and a heavily impulsive decision.

The lump became harder and harder to bear, and as he quickly teleported himself home, Loki became vaguely aware of the hot tears streaming down his face far too quickly for him to prevent. Because the problem was, that Cass wasn’t Sigyn. This entire time he had seen her as someone that was a Schrodinger’s cat of sort. That Sigyn could be Cass and herself at the same time. But this? This wasn’t Sigyn. This was Cass. Cass who had been left alone with nothing but an empty memory and horrifying nightmares for 3 years. Cass who never knew her true name and Cass who thought she was totally and utterly alone in everything she did. Cass who would have rather died for herself, because she couldn’t bear to live.

Oh gods.

Loki couldn’t hold back the sobs that were racking his body. Couldn’t stop the horrible thoughts, and visions, of that girl holding a knife in far too friendly a way, or eyeing a bottle of pills with dangerous intrusive thoughts in her head. Her, alone in a hospital with nightmares of gruesome torture which he had barely survived with her, and wouldn't have survived alone. Her, waking up with nothing and never getting anything but loneliness. Her, who's face had smiled once so brightly, remembering only a rock bottom. She who had never known or remembered a 'better' to look forwards to. Only rock bottom.

Oh gods.

He could still feel her peace in his chest, the gently and euphoric feeling she had earlier, but much dulled. He wanted to see her at peace, rather than the anxious creature he had met. He wanted to see her, as herself. As Sigyn, but not a trace of her was left, save for the moments of pain. All that was left of his Sigyn, in Cass, was pain.

Oh gods.

He was too late.


	9. Agreed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cass doesn't remember falling asleep, but waking up after that sort of dream, with _that_ person distracts her far more than caring about when she fell asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey!
> 
> Not too much angst today, but be warned there are more mentions of suicide, and a hint towards self harm, so proceed with caution.
> 
> Hope you enjoy this chapter!
> 
> Sophie x

_She didn’t remember falling asleep at all, hell she didn’t remember anything past the fact that, in that moment, she was waking up to a fire crawling up her skin and scorching her very soul. Every part of her hurt. Legs, hips, chest, head and arms. Especially arms. Well, specifically her left arm, on the scorched mark which would serve of the constant reminder of the binding and unrecoverable choice she had made. What was that choice again?_

_The burning became more and more intense, filling her very lungs and making it harder to breath. She wanted to quench that fire, drown it out in whatever way possible. It hurt, gods it hurt. It was making her want to rip her skin off, simply to be rid of whatever pain what dancing across her surface._

_She felt the surface she was lying on dip beside her. Instead of opening her eyes, she just screwed them shut tighter. She didn’t want to open them just to have the light of the room burn her in another way. Her head was pounding and any light would have just made it ten times worse._

_She felt a gentle arm snaking around her waist making her gasp. Not for the arm, but for the fact that it brought a gentle calming cold which made every part of her which touched it be soothed. Instantly, she turned and latched onto the person whom had provided the arm and dragged them closer. Though she didn’t know who it was, she felt like she did. Like she had done this before._

_“It hurts,” The person mumbled, burying their face in her neck and bringing a sweet relief, if only for a moment, “I know you said it would, but gods it hurts.”_

_She nodded, as if she had a clue what he was talking about. She felt as if she did know, but still she didn’t at the same time. She pulled her head back, still making sure her grip on the person was secure enough to bring relief, and opened her eyes to be greeted by a pair of blood red ones._

_And yet she wasn’t surprised._

_In those red eyes, she felt an essence of comfort that had never truly encompassed her in that way. There was something familiar about them, and yet completely foreign._

_“Oh Loki,” She said, the name slipping from her lips with no effort whatsoever, “I know.”_

_She could swear she knew that face. She knew it like seeing an actor out of costume then in. It wasn’t truly similar, but she knew the jaw, the cheeks, the slim lips and the cascading raven hair which was tickling her neck ever so slightly. She knew it, but not completely._

_The lips leant down and captured hers, ridding half of the burning in an instant. Oh gods how good it felt not to be in agony. She wrapped her arms around his neck, bringing him impossibly closer. Now that some of the burning was gone, she could feel a kind of hunger taking over. A hunger for the very person she was currently dragging closer to herself._

_He pulled her left arm away, bringing it gently to his lips and planting a kiss on it, making it warm gently, but not in a way that was painful. If anything it was a kind of warmth that indicated comfort more than anything else._

_“I love you,” He said, his hand slowly trailing down her hips, towards her thighs as he kissed her neck, “I love you Sigyn.”_

_His hand went up and-_

Cass woke up with a gasp, looking for the culprit of whatever the hell that dream had been. She was still on the couch in her living room, with the earbuds connecting to her phone still blasting out the Hans Zimmer classics, but at some points she must have discarded them.

Her cheeks were burning bright red and frankly she wanted to hide a little as if she had been doing something wrong. After knowing only nightmares, that felt more wrong than anything else. Who the hell was that?

People said that in a dream, you don’t realise something is odd until you wake up. Well, there was a hell of a lot that felt odd in that one but she couldn’t put her finger on why. Sure, there was an oversized Smurf whom she could have sworn had.. Horns? And sure, she had been ‘intimate’ with… Him? Like hell if Cass knew. 

He had kissed her so intimately, so gently, as if he had done it so many times and yet still felt so afraid she would break. As if he was afraid of himself, and how it would impact her.

And how familiar he had been? She had seen parts of him before, somewhere. There was the jaw, sharp and sleek, along with the high cheekbones, the lips, hell even the eye shape she had seen somewhere. The raven hair, oh god that hair. She definitely knew where she had seen that before.

“Fuck.” She breathed, leaning back on her couch and rubbing her eyes from sleep.

Him? Really? Sure, the features made sense, and sure the hair was a match, and Yes, he was incredibly attractive, but him? The guy she’d met a day ago, who ignored her for almost the whole time and apparently knew her before. That guy? No. No no no nooooo way would that ever happen. 

Maybe it was just because she’d never met him before? Or maybe it was because he was on her mind? As if she knew, but they sounded like solid excuses so she stuck to them.

She stood up and stretched, not wanting to sit on a couch for hours longer. The sun had set a while ago and everything in her apartment was dark.

She went to the side of her couch and flipped the switch which turned on the fairy lights, letting the room get bathed in a warm, soft and golden glow which comforted her so often after nightmares. 

As she did so, she remembered the warm feeling flaring up from her scar. It wasn’t from a burn they had always said, burns become lumpy and look as if your skin has melted… this was… different. She had never really cared about it, but now? Now she was running her fingers along it absentmindedly, trying to think of what could have caused it. It wasn’t anything special, just a stretch of skin which looked as if it had grown after the other skin, and was slightly red and raised. 

And why had it gone warm? Why did it seem to be the place that had burnt the worst?

_Write it down._

She huffed and walked over to her small kitchenette, bringing out her Nesquick packet and lumping two spoons of chocolatey goodness into a mug, and bringing out the milk to warm. instead of putting it in a saucer as she usually did, she just chucked it in the mug and shoved the whole thing in the microwave. She wasn’t in the mood to wait.

During that time, she went and fetched her phone, opening it up to more missed calls and messages. She opened the iMessage app and scrolled through the many texts from Tony she had received whilst sleeping or listening to music. They ranged from hey, u ok? To Kid, I’m really worried, please text me back.

Sure, they had reason to be worried, and she understood why they were. After all, she had run off like that in the past and it hadn’t ended well for anyone. She’d never seen Tony cry until then.

So she sighed and pulled the phone closer to her, typing out a message.

_I’m fine, just needed some space and needed to clear my head._

She knew he probably wouldn’t see the message until he woke up, unless he was up at 3:15am, and so she proceeded to go through the voice messages she had been left.

She heard a sigh on the other side of the line from when Tony had left the voice message. 

“Shit, ok hey Cass, its Tony, look I’m just calling to make sure you’re alright,” He said, seemingly frustrated, “You seemed a bit upset, call me back, bye.” 

The tone went dead. The phone asked if she wanted to save or delete the message. She saved it and moved on to the next one. Every single voice message got increasingly worried, saying things from ‘Text me when you get this’ to ‘I’m worried, are you ok?’

The last one was by far the worst. 

“Cass?” He sounded on the verge of tears, very much trying to keep it together, “Cass please please please tell me you haven’t tried again, please pick up or text me or anything just, please tell me you didn’t try again.”

She listened to that one about 5 times over. Sure, it was sadistic to listen to your friends getting worried about you, but it was something that showed they cared. She saved those kinds of voice messages for bad days when she thought no one cared.

After a couple of minutes, she gave in and pressed the little phone next to his contact. Sure he might be asleep, but she felt guilty for leaving him with no response. 

It barely rung once before she heard someone pick up.

“Cass?” Gods, he sounded exhausted, “Cass, you ok?”

“Hi Tony,” She replied, “Yeah, I just needed to think for a bit.”

She heard a breath of relief. How long had he been waiting to hear from her?

“I just, I don’t think I’ll be going in today.” Cass said, trying not to bite her lip. She heard silence from the other end of the line, before a little bit of shuffling.

“Do you want me to come over?” 

Cass breathed out a laugh and shook her head. She didn’t even know that she wanted him to come over, but if anyone knew what it was like to be left alone with your thoughts for too long it was Tony Stark. No, she didn’t really want to have anyone with her to be honest, but she knew her thoughts were far unfriendlier than Tony. In fact, he would be a welcome distraction from the thoughts dancing dangerously in her head.

“Cassie?”

“Yeah, Doctor who marathon?”

She heard a huff of amusement from the other side of the line, something which had become synonymous with ‘oh of course she would.’

“I’ll be there in 10.”

“Aight, bye.”

Cass hung up and stood up, looking around the apartment. Truthfully, she hadn’t had anyone around for about a month, so she had woefully let the place go a little. Of course, if there was any time to be proactive about cleaning, Cass was glad it was during the nights.

Daytime had expectations. When it was daytime, you had expectations and were forced to do things such as taxes and look like a normal human being. Nighttime was fun time. At night, you could wear whatever you want, even the fanciest dress you owned, and do whatever you wanted in it. She could dance with no one to Bowie, or eat cereal whilst watching The Good Place. Endless possibilities.

She began picking things up, starting first around her couch and collecting the many marmite roasted cashew wrappers around it. Next, the kitchen. The plates in the sink went in the dishwasher, and the cups, and the cutlery. 

It looked semi presentable, or presentable enough for Tony. He had seen her at her worst, so a semi messy apartment was better than a complete pigsty of an apartment. 

She walked around to the front door, picking up the letters that had been dropped off earlier. One from her insurance company. ‘Life insurance half off!’ Always so excited about death. Another from her psychiatrist, reminding her of how long it had been since a session. She did mean to schedule another, but she always remembered to do it during the night. And another one, a note.

It wasn’t specifically addressed to her. In fact, there was no address on it whatsoever. Just a folded piece of paper. 

Cass set down the other two letters and opened the folded piece of paper. 

On the top was a name crossed out, definitely not hers. She had an ’S’ only at the end, well two, but there was a clear loop at the top and bottom of where something was scribbled. S for… salutations? 

_Cass,_

She didn’t recognise the handwriting. Peter’s looked like a 12 year olds on caffeine pills. Tony’s was sharp and occasionally looping, May’s was scribbled and tight. This? This was gentle and elegant. It swooped and curved with effortless grace, as if the person writing had received perfect training and had years to practise. It was frustratingly beautiful.

She was just about to keep reading when a knock came on her door, tearing her from the sheet of paper directly in front of her. She placed it down on the counter along with the rest of her mail and walked towards the door.

“Password?” She said, smiling when she heard the familiar exasperated sigh.

“It doesn’t do wood.” Came the muffled reply. 

Cass swung the door open and smiled slightly at a tired looking Tony, who had a bag of popcorn under one arm and a flask of what was probably coffee under the other.

“Wrists.” He said, taking a step into the premises.

Cass rolled up her selves and brandished bloodless wrists to him, making sure to turn her arm around a bit to make sure he saw the uncut skin. He gave her a once over to see if any part of her body hurt, or if it seemed to hurt, before nodding, satisfied. He put down his items on the counter and walked up to Cass, before wrapping his arms around her, and groaning.

“It’s too early in the morning to be worried.”

“Agreed.” Cass replied.


	10. Knock knock

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cass tries to prod Tony for answers but he can give none.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Editing and proofreading is for pussies. 
> 
> I die like a woman, specifically a woman too tired and scared for work tomorrow
> 
> Anyway, here's a chapter, enjoy!
> 
> Sophie xx

“Bullshit.” Tony threw a piece of popcorn straight at the tv screen, almost getting to its target before Cass gasped in outrage.

“How Dare you!” She said, pulling the bowl of popcorn out of his hands, “Attacking fan favourites is forbidden in this household.” 

Tony gestured to David Tennant, who was lurking around The Library and looking gloomy as he so often did as the Doctor. In the episode, he was talking to the Vashta Nerada, the shadows of the forests whom had been cut down. Granted, it was one of the more creepy episodes of Doctor Who, but Cass loved it anyway. The creepier they were, the more she would stay awake. The more she stayed awake, the less the nightmares would bother her.

“Yeah but it is bullshit man. The Vashta Nerada are not ‘dust in the sunbeams’ or whatever.” He said, gesturing grandly at the screen.

“Hey, you believed the whole carrot thing in future episodes.” Cass shot back, shoving a handful of popcorn into an open maw.

“Suspension of disbelief is different to scientific possibility.” He said.

Cass snorted and shook her head. She had learnt a long time that arguing with Tony about ‘accuracy’ was a losing battle. Humanoid aliens? Sure, why not. Sentient parasites? Could happen! A justified fear of the dark? Bullshit.

“Fine, be a whiny lil bitch about it.”

“I am a whiny lil bitch.” Tony said, imitating her.

“Yeah, I know, its your contact name on my phone.”

“Hey!”

Cass just shushed him and glued herself back to the screen, watching as Donna talked to Miss Evangalista, the deformed shell of the original. 

She had always sort of empathised with those characters. The ones who forgot, or the ones who had been deformed to be so different from their past selves that they lost everything. Miss Evangalista was a broken piece, granted more intelligent, of her past self. She was alone, almost unloved and was aware of the reality of false lives. She wanted to ask, she really wanted to know what on earth the two were talking about, but there was a pit in her stomach and a lump in her throat which refused by all accounts to let her talk.

“Hey,” She began softly, still watching the tv, but still able to see Tony turn in her peripheral vision.

“What were you and Luke talking about earlier? I know I stormed in and I interrupted you and all, but, trauma?”

She heard Tony suck in a sharp breath whilst simultaneously trying to be quiet. He knew it wasn’t his place to tell her, it was Loki who should. It was him who had gone through it, it was Loki who understood and could break it to her gently, and yet all Tony wanted to do was to tell her everything.

“Look, kiddo, I’m really sorry but its not my place to tell you.” He said, bringing his hand to the back of his neck and rubbing.

“Well, who’s place is it then?” She didn’t sound hurt, or even angry, just tired. Tired of what? Probably the deceit, the secrets, the very knowledge about herself that was so close to her reach.

“Luke.” Tony replied. “But just, I know you want answers, hell, so do I, but some of the things he wants to tell you, he can’t. Just, wait? I dunno.”

Tony huffed and fell back on the sofa, feeling a familiar headache forming behind his eyes. Ugh, stress, you sneaky slut. He didn’t want to do this so soon. He wanted to break it to her slowly, gently. Introduce her to the idea of it slowly before actually telling her. To get a fish in a tank, you had to adjust it to the water not throw it in. Hell, they didn’t even throw in, the bag just broke.

“I’m really sorry,” Tony said, pinching the bridge of his nose, “I wanted to do it differently, tell you in a way that didn’t just drop a fucking bomb, but here we are.” 

Cass felt a small amount of guild festering in the pit of her stomach. She shouldn’t have asked about it. What had been a perfectly normal 3am (ish) had turned into an awkward Q and A about something neither participant in the room knew too much about.

Cass just sighed and looked ahead, back to the doctor.

Donna was crying. Her family was fake, her children were gone and she thought her husband wasn’t real. Cass knew she shouldn’t have watched this episode, just for the sheer fact that it hit a little close to home sometimes.

She stood and went slowly to her kitchen, pulling out her pack of cocoa and two little mugs and some milk from the fridge. She didn’t exactly want to tear herself away from The Doctor, but Cocoa helped her focus.

She heard the doctor pause mid word, and all of the music cease from the tv show before her couch groaned as Tony stood. Cass didn’t want to look towards him. Emotions wasn’t something she was good at dealing with by herself, much less other people. When she had emotions she cried and hurt and basically tried anything to make them go away. She hated them, and was very much emotionally constipated, but other people having emotions? Tolerable but somewhat uncomfortable.

He parked next to her, keeping his eyes steadily on his clasped hands.

“I can’t tell you cause I don’t know. I wasn’t there. I only heard.”

Cass turned to him, curious.

“What did you hear?”

Tony opened his mouth, as if about to speak, before a knock on the door brought them out of their thoughts.

 

Loki woke up, still laying on the ground where he had fallen asleep. In all honesty, he felt like crap. All he wanted to do was to curl up in a ball and sleep for an eternity. His limbs ached and there was a sort of pain in his throat from too much crying. He didn’t want to move, but every part of his body hurt and a bed was exactly what was required. 

There was a sort of void in his chest, as if everything which should be there and should be working was gone somehow. His heard had vanished, his lungs were gone and everything just hurt.

She’s just downstairs.

No. She wasn’t. Cass was.

But she is Cass. Just a touch and she would understand.

Cass didn’t like touching, so it was out of the question. The worst thing would be to force her to do something she was uncomfortable with. Making her feel his emotions would be bad enough, but touching her, re-igniting what had been dormant for so long could cause pain similar to when they first wed, and Loki wasn’t ready for that. Hell, he wasn’t ready for most things going on, but most of all, she would hate every moment of touch, so it wasn’t going to happen.

But just to be there perhaps? 

His thoughts were cut off by a buzz on his phone, where the icon he had come to associate with Tony popped up on his screen beside a message. Loki slouched over to it, almost too exhausted to do even that. He slid his phone towards him and checked the message.

“Hey bud, downstairs. I think you should probably come and talk, she needs answers.”

Loki’s breath hitched, and instantly his heart started going a thousand miles an hour. She wasn’t supposed to know yet, about anything. They had a fucking plan to deal with this. It was along the lines of ‘try and break it to her gently and introduce the ideas in discussions’ not ‘have her find out you know her within a DAY of meeting her.’

Loki just let out a breath, releasing the tension in his shoulders, which Thor had often told him looked like they were ready to snap off in some times. 

But, she had to know at some point. Maybe not the entirety of the story or the details, such as the rule of a planet, not originating from earth or the fact that he could turn blue, but simply the general story. Somehow. 

He wasn’t exactly sure what the ‘story’ would be, but something vague and mildly convincing should do considering the time.

There was some corner of his brain screaming at him to stop as he pulled his hair into some poorly conceived bun, as well as changed from his disheveled clothes to something vaguely acceptable to be wearing when seeing other people. He couldn’t find anything except a pair of leggings and a black women’s crop top with flowers decorating it. Overall it looked like he was going to a party with the theme: “Hawaiian Gothic workout.”

His brain screamed and screamed for him to stop at his door, begging him to just return to bed and leave every problem for tomorrow. He was sure he looked a state, having cried himself to sleep against a door. His brain screamed as he walked down a single flight of stairs and screamed as he readied himself near the door. The one he had passed regularly, but never been able to knock on. 

As he raised his fist his brain went quiet.

For a moment, all he could hear was nothing, until a gentle whisper harshly battered him.

She’s never coming back.

He knocked.


	11. sparks of recognition.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luke is at Cass's apartment to talk about her memories, and answer any questions if needs be. But through the questions, Cass gets side tracked by a glimpse of a very familiar scar, but one problem. It's supposed to be only on her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEllo!!!
> 
> Less angst than before (i think) and more progressing towards the story line (i hope)
> 
> So enjoy!
> 
> Sophie xx

Cass opened the door to be greeted by a very tired looking Luke.

Luke, who somehow knew who she was according to Tony, Luke who she had only seen a couple of times at work. Luke, who was standing in front of her, wearing women’s exercise leggings, a tight long sleeved t-shirt and a Hawaiian buttoned up crop top with his hair in a very messy bun.

Luke whom, until an hour ago, had been a blue naked fantasy in one of the weirdest dreams she had ever been privy to. 

He looked somewhat sheepish, and kept glancing behind her at Tony whilst she looked him up and down, a little startled.

“Erm, hello,” Said Cass, moving aside to let him in.

Luke nodded in acknowledgement and slid past her, trying to avoid eye contact as much as possible.

To be perfectly honest, he didn’t want to be here. Going through a slight mental breakdown a floor above your amnesiac wife was one thing, but having her figure it out and start asking questions an hour after said breakdown? Devastating was a word that came to mind. Loki wasn’t sure he was strong enough to answer a single question, much less many.

Her inquisitive gaze was fixed on him as Cass watched him enter her apartment. Sure he looked slightly odd in his getup, and she never thought she’d see a man in a Hawaiian crop top, but it was more the fact that this individual had apparently been part of her life at one point, but looked so completely out of place in her own home. 

He was trying to figure out where to sit on her couch, or perhaps one of the chairs, and looked so completely lost on what to do. Eventually he settled on her turquoise couch close to where her fairy lights were hung on the wall, and began to fidget with his hands. He would pick at the very finger, and lace his fingers every so often, followed by a small yet noticeable sigh. Hunched back, downcast eyes and a tense jaw. He looked like a child who had been brought in by the principal for detention.

Cassie said nothing, and slowly walked towards her notebook which had been hastily cast aside on her sofa, close to the edge. She wordlessly picked it up and sat opposite Luke, who was desperately trying to avoid eye contact for some reason. 

She put her notebook on her lap and felt her throat constricting, as well as some weird horrifying feeling building in the pit of her stomach which felt suspiciously like she was going to vomit. Instead of paying attention to these feelings, she swallowed them down and opened her notebook to the page of questions.

She didn’t particularly want to ask all of them, just enough to learn what she needed to. She didn’t want to go for the ‘trauma’ question yet. That was a bit too heavy for tonight.

Instead, she let her finger hover over one specific question she thought would be light enough for the night.

“So, you know me.” She began, keeping her eyes trained on her own shoes.

She heard movement in front of her, as Luke shifted in his chair.

“Yes.” He replied quietly, evermore playing with his hands.

Cass felt the clawing at her throat increase. 

“How.”

Luke shifted his fidgeting to the hem of his sleeve on his left arm, as if trying to pull it down whilst letting it be a distraction from the question she was asking.

‘How?’ Well, that was the most difficult question to answer for him. Telling Sigyn, or Cass, that they had been married would pressure her. Being told you were married to someone you didn’t know was an impossible pressure. It was an impossible question to answer.

How to tell her that he had been dragged to the foot of her throne, ragged and beaten and bruised, and she had been the one to see him through an illusion. That she was the only one who saw him when he was trying to hide. He couldn’t very well tell her that there were moments when it felt like only two of them existed, and that if he had to, he would have razed entire planets to the ground simply to give her an even plane to walk over. 

He shifted again, the hem of his shirt rising up ever so slightly.

“Well,” He began, his voice quivering slightly, “I knew you from a sort of ‘rehab’.” 

Oh god, here come the lies and twisted truths.

“I had been in an abusive situation, and ended up heavily injured and you helped me heal, and let me stay with you so that I didn’t have to go home.”

It wasn’t a lie. That was exactly what she had done. Every single broken bone he had eventually fused back together, and his wounds had been cleaned and helped, and vanaheim was her home. She had let him stay in her own palace, consoled and empathised with him without a second thought. She had been kind, sweet and nurturing, whilst also defending him with the ferocity of a thousand armies. She had done it because no one had ever done it for her.

There had been moments where he had sworn he could see green fire dancing behind her eyes, hypnotic and terrifying in every instant. And every time it had to do with him. 

“Why,” Cass said slowly, “Why would I do that?”

Loki felt his lip curve into a gentle, sweet smile.

“For pity, I suppose.”

If not for her pity, Sigyn would be alive. If not for her pity, he wouldn’t be talking to a complete stranger about a life she had forgotten. If not for pity there would never had been a place for Loki to cause problems. Always him. Always problems.

As he was thinking, he brought the sleeve of his shirt up whilst fiddling with it, to reveal a particularly odd scar which he had become so used to. It was a comfort in a way. In fact, he scarcely paid attention to it, simply because it was there as it was every day.

Unfortunately, said scar happened to grab Cass’s eye.

Her breath hitched slightly as she saw an almost, if not identical scar to hers, which was carefully placed in almost the exact same position as hers. On his left arm.

Luke looked up and met her eyes, before looking down at where she had been staring and quickly pulling his sleeve down. No no no no no no. Oh gods no not now. Not today. He had put his arm between his knees and intended keeping it there.

But she was staring, with her mouth gently agape and her eyebrows raising every so slightly every couple of seconds.

“You-“ She began, trying to formulate the words, “You have a scar.”

“No.” Said Loki, fully aware that he did indeed have a scar.

“Yes, in the same place as mine.” Cass said, pulling up her left sleeve to reveal an ever present scar, in exactly the same place as Loki’s.

Thank gods, he thought, she still had it.

She still had the connection to an extent, but it was simply one sided for some reason. She didn’t have a connection to his emotions, but there was a possibility that she still might.

“Look!” She brandished her arm, tilting it so that he could get a full view of her scar. 

He didn’t need to see it, he already knew what it looked like from the one on his arm, and yet just seeing it again, on her arm, gave him all the comfort he needed.

“Can I see yours?” Cass was curious now. Everything in her was telling her that having an identical scar with someone was more than odd, but she needed to see it. Just to know that it was real, and not some fake that had been made to taunt her. Sure, that was a cynical way to see things but she didn’t know this person, truly, and scars were easy to fake. Just ask the trick or treater who scared Cass with a gory fake slash down their face.

Luke slowly moved his arm from between his knees and extended it towards Cass, whom had her eyes fixated on it as if it was going to blow up. He slowly moved the sleeve up to reveal his scar, and Cass couldn’t take her eyes off it.

It was identical in every way. Every slope, every sharp edge and every curve moved and spread across his skin in the same way it did hers. Sure, hers had freckles on the outside of it, and his was slightly paler due to his skin, but apart from that she could see no difference between his and hers.

“Is this- Is this a trick?” Cass said, looking up at Luke, and then Tony hesitantly.

“God, I wish kid.” Tony replied, his fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. He was a third wheel to his own idea. Typical.

Cass leaned in again, examining it further. She brought her hand up reluctantly, weighing the pro’s and cons of actually touching the damn thing. Sure, she might feel uncomfortable and her skin will crawl for a couple of minutes, but thats nothing an ice cube from the freezer couldn’t fix. 

And so, before she could stop herself, Cass held Luke’s wrist in her right hand and brushed her left thumb over the scar.

The reaction was almost instantaneous.

A bolt of electricity went through Cass’s thumb and straight up her arm, causing her to shriek and pull back as if she had been burnt. She was left staring at her hand which was throbbing every so slightly, and yet nothing had caused it. All she had done was touch a damn scar and there was no way it could have caused that sensation.

And yet, looking up she met Luke’s astonished gaze and caught him rubbing along the exact area where her thumb had been. For a moment it looked like it was glowing ever so slightly in the dim light of the room, a faint green, but before she could question it, the glow was gone.

Tony was looking between the two of them, wide eyed and slightly worried.

“What in the tough titty wampa’s was that.”

Cass just stared breathlessly at Luke, still trying to figure out what to say.

She didn’t want to scare anyone, and to say that she felt like her entire arm had been consumed by some sort of electricity, because that sounded insane. An arm couldn’t be consumed by electricity. It was impossible without an actual source of electricity. And yet she had felt it clear as day, arching up her arm and jolting her to her very core.

Her arm ached as if she had lifted an entire damn house with it, and she could swear she felt an unusual amount of panic despite not feeling the need to panic. It was almost as if her emotions had become twice as intense, and twice as potent.

And as someone who was severely emotionally constipated, that was an achievement.

Luke just looked at her, back at his arm, and then to her, before wordlessly picking himself up and walking to the bathroom.

After the door shut, Cass heard the tap running, as well as a bit of splashing of water, but afterwards all she heard was silence.

In this time, the panic in her chest, which she was sure wasn’t quite supposed to be there, had abated enough that she could relax back into her chair. She wanted to be able to think of a reason it had happened, or wanted to think of some explanation for electric identical scars, but all she could do was play with her ring, twisting it back and forth as she watched the bathroom door.

When Luke came back out, his hair was undone and it was clear that he had run his hands through it a couple of times. It reminded Cass of the dream she’d had, with the ‘Luke’ she had seen then, and made her look away. Bad Cass, thinking of him in that way. 

Luke simply gave both Cass and Tony a small nod, a goodbye, and left.

Eventually, after a couple of episodes of Doctor Who, Tony decided it was time to go back, if Cass was ok with being left alone of course, as well as if she promised to answer her phone.

“I will.” She had said with a half smile.

Alone in her apartment, all Cass could do was think. Every single time she went over the ‘spark’ and she decided to call it, all she could think about was how it wasn’t supposed to happen. Unless Luke had been wearing socks which he had rubbed on a carpet for over an hour, and had somehow conserved the charge whilst keeping his hair down, there was no way that was possible.

And yet, it happened.


	12. The Fuckening I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **The Fuckening:**
> 
>  
> 
> When your day is going too well and you don't trust it and some shit finally goes down
> 
>  
> 
> _Ah, there it is, the fuckening._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WADDUP YA BITCH IS ALIVE... BARELY
> 
> a lots happened in the past few weeks: I'm quitting my job because the hours are shit. I now hate Christmas and Yew Years Eve (see past sentence) and i'm applying to uni's for (surprise surprise) Creative Writing!!!!!
> 
> I'm sorry this chapter took so long, but by god i had no idea how to start it
> 
> WARNING: there is blood (a little) and swearing (a lot) in this chapter
> 
> Anyway, Enjoy!!!
> 
> Sophie xxx

It was hard to watch, how her body spasm with pain and the screams tore through her throat. How she clawed at her own skin to try and relieve the burning which was boiling just below the surface, and how she couldn’t cry anymore because there were simply no tears left to fall. The claw marks she had left on herself surely would have been bleeding twice fold if not for how she seemed to have no control over her body whatsoever.

Loki had felt it in the morning, and had ignored it.

Not a burning, but rather a warmth surrounding and encasing his body, making it just a few degrees to warm throughout the day. Sure, he simply brushed it off as illness, because who knew what sort of disgusting diseases lay bickering about I the mortal realm, but he should have known. If not from the fact that he was immune to those diseases, then because of the underlying sense of dread which clung to him like the stench of death through the day.

When he had awoken, his covers had been thrown off of him during the night, and most of his clothing clung to him due to a thin sheen of sweat. It was ever so slightly too hot and he wasn’t quite sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing. Maybe it was just because the heating had turned on whilst he slept. Or perhaps an odd resurgence of his true heritage for no reason whatsoever other than to annoy and remind him of his oddity. 

He groaned and barely rolled out of bed. His feet hit the floor with the silence of a well taught house cat. His every muscle ached and groaned in protest at the movement, begging to back to the immobility of the bed, and instead only encouraged Loki to walk away from it, muttering angrily about useless mortal mattresses.

He stretched his back and padded aimlessly towards the kitchen, wandering to this cupboard and that to see what he could possibly eat. Of course, nothing truly stood out to him and only fell into a background. His stomach growled, begging for something to possibly dull its wailings, and so he sighed and grabbed some old croissants, shoving them into his mouth. 

_Happy now?_ He asked himself, bored.

_Foooooooooooooood._ His stomach loudly replied.

Loki gulped down the pastry and went back to his room, deciding that turning up to the theatre looking like a sweaty, half drowned dog wasn’t exactly the best way to make an impression.

He rooted through his draws, trying to find something half decent. The shirt he had worn last night might have been nice, had it not been left crumpled on the floor, looking slightly sad. instead, he pulled out an ebony suit which had been worn enough to be comfortable, but not enough to have been truly ‘worn down.’

He rifled through the pockets, looking for something which could be somewhat helpful or to find anything that might need to be thrown away at any point. Instead, he his palm was greeted by a very sharp and very angry knife.

“MOTHER FUCKER.” 

Loki’s hand jumped back and he dropped his coat promptly. Somewhat because of the fact that his hand was bleeding quite heavily, but mostly because of the profanity which his floorboards had allowed to slip between the room below his to his bedchambers. 

“FUCK, SHIT, MOTHERFUCKING UGH.” 

The floorboards, or rather whoever was beneath them, kept cursing. 

Loki looked down at his hand and saw the deep cut which seemed to be dripping blood, but he couldn’t truly feel any pain due to the voice which was very much distracting it. There was crimson steadily streaming from a very dark patch, and instead of getting a bandage, Loki instead pressed down on it. Hard.

“HOLY MARY MOTHER OF JESUS’S CUNT.”

He looked down at his hand in bewilderment, trying to fully comprehend what had happened within the past minute properly, without imploding that is. He looked at the wound, still very much open and bleeding, and then to the floorboards they were dripping on to, where below, a very loud grumble was being forced out of a girl’s mouth. The problem wasn’t that she had cut her hand, but rather there was a pain, very similar to a cut’s _exactly where there wasn’t a cut._

Loki grinned, a fully consuming, complete smile which engulfed his entire face. His eyes were alight with a glint that had died many eons ago. The smile lines, long since unused and abandoned, crinkled in pure adoration and joy of the moment. Sure, there was a very angry girl below him with the power to level the entire city cursing to higher powers he had never heard of, but she was cursing because of him. Or rather, because she felt it.

She felt their souls, apart in distance but together in pain.

He was so happy he forgot the gaping hole in his own hand, and was only reminded when he went to wipe hair out of his face, and was greeted by a disgusting abundance of blood in his eyebrows.

~~~~~~~~~

Cass didn’t get it.

She was hot and sweaty, and overall just uncomfortable for no reason other than to mess with her. Not only that, but her left arm seemed to be slightly hotter than the rest of her body.

Maybe she was having a heart attack? It would make sense. The amount of crap she ate which she really shouldn’t was almost astounding. So much so that even Wade, the weirdly smiley guy and his stripper girlfriend from apartment 2b even commented on it. And they did cocaine.

There was an odd sort of ache deep in her every muscle, begging her to lie back down on her bed. And so, she complied. No, she was not going to call an ambulance, because that would entail a fee which could put her in debt permanently. That was without even considering the treatment costs and how much actual surgery, if needed would cost. No. If she was going to die of a heart attach, she would die knowing she hadn’t wasted $50,000 on a useless cure which would have just elongated her suffering anyway. Not that she had anyone to give her pitiful savings to.

She lay in her creaky, useless bed which gave her nothing but a place to have nightmares, and contemplated her useless and meaningless existence, as she did most Tuesdays. There was a sort of unadulterated dread which was slowly filling her stomach, as if she had been given the wrong blood type and her body was trying to warn her of the problem, only to inevitably fail.

Ah well, c’est la vie.

The ache began to settle, like a gentle layer of dust on an undisturbed room, and forced her to remain bed bound. No, she didn’t like the idea that she was giving herself an excuse to be lazy. No, she didn’t want to avoid work and its annoying black haired distractions. Yes, she knew that staying at home was repeating bad patterns. But did she care? No. Because she ache didn’t care about bad habits and so on. It just wanted to make her hurt. 

The sense of dread was continually building, as if she were a dog which could sense, but was somehow also blissful unaware of, an oncoming tsunami. It was completely and utterly frustrating, because she wasn’t quite sure what the tsunami would be, or how it would manifest, or even if it was real in any way. There was just a tsunami. And it kept getting closer.

There was a thrumming in her heart (possibly the oncoming attack) which wasn’t helping with the general feeling of unease. It was as if there was a music playing in the background of her mind, slowly building in pace and pitch, waiting to reach its inevitable crescendo. It was mounting, and building ever so slowly, slugging along its noticeable and yet painfully slow hastening.

Even though she ached and felt feverish, every part of her body was now telling her to move, to try and get some distance between herself and the bed, because if nothing else was wrong it was probably the environment.

And so she stood, swinging her legs off the corner of the bed, before slowly shuffling herself down. Eventually she found her arse squarely on the edge and pushed herself off, if not out of boredom then out of the building anxiety which had her heart quickening in pace.

She walked to the kitchen and began making herself some hot chocolate, trying to avoid the feeling of eyes squarely on her. She tried to focus on what she was doing in front of her, without messing anything up, and yet she still managed to push the full jug of milk onto the floor.

“fuck.” She whispered to herself quietly.

All at once, the feeling seemed to abate. Not the ache, not the burning, but the distinct fear that there was something watching her, and the dread that had been mounting in her very being.

That was the fuckening? Dropping milk? Alright. 

She tipped the bottle to the right way up and dragged a wash cloth to the sink, before wetting it, ringing it out and eventually dragging it along the milk on her floor. She was trying to best to get into the creases and the corners of the counter tops so no sour milk would be left. She had almost forgotten about the dread before-

“MOTHER FUCKER.” 

Cass screeched and pulled her right hand back, holding it very tightly between her legs to try and abate the horrific pain which seemed to have come unannounced. 

“FUCK, SHIT, MOTHERFUCKING UGH.” 

She really was in a great deal of pain.

She looked up between gritted teeth and teary eyes to try and spot something which could have possibly caused the level of pain she was in. 

Nothing.

No shards of glass, no knives nearby, nothing.

There was no reason her hand should be throbbing painfully, as if it had been sliced right open, the way it was, and yet there she was holding an injured hand between her knees, only there was nothing that could have injured her. Maybe it was in the cut?

Gingerly, she brought her hand out from between her knees and opened it, to try and assess the damage done, and how much time she’d have to beg on the streets of Queens to try and afford the medical bill that was about to be racked up. And there was nothing.

Nothing on her hand. A nothing that felt like a whole lot of something. A nothing that felt totally and completely like a motherfucking something had left its damn mark on her motherfucking hand. But no. No mark, no cut, not even a damn scratch. How in hell was there not even a damn scratch.

Cass groaned, and went to retrieve the cloth she had dropped on the floor.

“HOLY MARY MOTHER OF JESUS’S CUNT.”

A fresh wave of pain made its way, again unannounced, straight to the centre of Cass’s palm which again, was jammed squarely between her knees as if it would help in any way.

Phantom pains. Great. First realistic nightmares, now unsliced/sliced palms. What was next, feeling ghost pains in a limb which had grown out of her ass?

“Fuck, fuck, fuck fuck fuckfuckfuck.” She swore to herself, shaking the hand as vigorously as she could. Shake it off, Taylor had said. No good it did her though. Instead her hand simply remained in pain as it had done moments before. 

She hobbled towards her freezer, still trying to put pressure on her ‘wound’ as if it would help her, before yanking open the freezer door and grabbing a couple of ice cubes. She rubbed them soothingly on the area and sighed. So the milk wasn’t the fuckening.

Cass swore again and chucked the useless ice cubes in the sink. 

_Well, today’s shaping up to be terrific._ She thought to herself sarcastically.

At least the intense pain in her hand had distracted her somewhat from the aching pain which seemed to have dulled slightly. If there was anything to benefit from it, the fact that she could drag herself to work would be that.

She hastily gathered her things and shoved them into her bag, before throwing on an oversized NASA jumper and some stormtrooper pyjama leggings. If there was anywhere that wouldn’t be bothered by her being dressed like this in public, it was New York.

She grabbed a pair of shoes and quickly put them on, before hastily grabbing her mass of curls and shoving them haphazardly into a sort of a bun shape, and surveyed herself in her mirror.

She looked like she was dying ever so slightly.

Her bags, usually offset by her freckles, had become dark circles under her eyes which prominently stood out. Her usually bright eyes had been dulled by the heat which was simmering just beneath the skin, and she looked slightly pale and somewhat ashen. 

Cass sighed and surveyed her outfit, smiling slightly when she found a pin on her lapel, which she was sure she had lost.

“Hello, Vincent.” She said quietly, smiling at the redheaded man with a bandage on his ear.

She walked back to the bag, making sure she had everything she needed, before slinging it over her shoulder and unlocking the door. 

Of course, she hadn’t exactly checked the time when she had gone through the flurry of activity in her house, in fact she had barely glanced out of the window before leaving. And even if she had looked, It was highly unlikely that someone who felt as though they had just been stabbed would have been bothered at all by the time.

So when she walked out onto the street and saw that the sun was barely making its rise above the horizon, she was a little more than surprised. She gave a quick glance at her phone to find that she had about 2 hours to get to work, when all she needed was about 20 minutes. Ah, the joys of being an insomniac.

Cass just sighed and brought her bag closer to her, shivering in the cold morning air, despite the ever present heat. She plugged in her earphones, letting the sweet voice of Andrea Bocelli lull her into some sense of ease, and yet, the dread still remained. Of course it did.

As usual, the subway of New York was an odd place to be, even before most people were awake. Come to think of it, it was odd especially when most people weren’t awake.

It was sometimes the occasional cosplayer, or maybe a giant hotdog person on their way to work, or a half naked person or so on. Today it was odd because of the person she bumped into on the way into the train.

She didn’t recognise the person who brushed past her at first, only catching a glimpse of them through a low hood, but when she looked back she locked eyes with a very frightened, and very beat up Peter Parker.

Cass froze with her mouth agape, trying to find something to say. Peter just stared back, equally bewildered.

“Peter,” Cass began, taking a step towards him.

The doors of the subway closed, it began to move, and slowly Peter Parker had turned into a blur on an equally distorted platform, and soon he was gone.

“Fuck.” Cass said under her breath, pulling out her phone. No signal. Typical.

“Fuck.” She repeated. It was shaping up to be ‘one of those’ days.

The rest of the journey was blurry. Cass’s leg was tapping incessantly on the floor as the car rattled on, with only one person to occupy it. Occasionally, the odd drunk or druggie would step on, but they would stumble off soon enough. By the time she got to her location, she had almost worried herself today (which seemed to be one of her favourite pastimes) and had thought of just about every reason Peter could have had a split lip, a black eye, a bruised cheek and what looked like a semi broken nose.

She rushed out of the subway station to be greeted by morning light, stinging her eyes ever so slightly. She whipped out her phone and instantly pulled open the messenger app to find a text already waiting for her.

Nerd boi: _Don’t tell Aunt May._

Cass huffed and began typing as she was walking, before deleting the message over and over again. Sure, she was a writer, but writing people was a lot easier than actually talking to them. Finally she managed to type out a relatively sound message before hitting send.

Princess Leia: _Just tell me you’re ok and nothing is wrong, and I won’t._

She put her phone back in her pocket and kept walking towards the theatre, before eventually feeling a buzz in her pocket.

Nerd boi: _Yeah, I’m fine. I’ll explain later ok?_

Princess Leia: _Ok, just text me if you need anything. I’ll reply asap and be over if you need me to be._

With that, she shoved her phone back into her pocket and kept up the walk to work, trying her best not to focus on the silent phone.

When she finally got to work, Cass didn’t allow herself time to dwell on Peter, instead she sat down and wrote, trying her best to churn out whatever she possibly could in terms of story ideas. There were bits and pieces which made their way onto the page, pieces that could be used if refined, and others that would need some serious work. It was always this way. Writing down whatever came to mind and working with it in some way.

She kept writing even when voices started passing by in the hall, and kept writing through the sounds of rehearsals starting. She only stopped writing to look up and see a familiar dark figure slinking through the door of the office. He seemed particularly cheery, with a gentle smile kindly painting his features. In an odd way, it made him look rather... timid, but in an attractive way? Ok she was definitely having a heart attack.

“Hey Luke.” Cass said, quickly turning back to her work.

“Cass.” He replied, taking a seat in one of the chairs stuffed haphazardly in a corner.

“Nice suit.” She said, quickly saving the document and closing her laptop. 

Luke just smiled to himself and reached into his bag, bringing out a notebook and pen, and began writing. Cass was almost about to follow suit until she was stopped by a glance at his left hand.

It wasn’t particularly interesting about the hand. It wasn’t glowing, it wasn’t burning anything, and it wasn’t holding anything of particular interest. But it was wrapped in a cloth. A cloth with small smudges of red staining the edges of it. A cloth that had not been there yesterday. On the exact hand where she had felt pain today.

Oh boy.


	13. Blood and glass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cass thinks she's going crazy, Tony has to help, and Loki realises that sharing a fever with someone you've just touched doesn't just mean they have potent germs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WADDUP GUESS WHO's KINDA SORT OF NOT DEAD
> 
> ANyway, enjoy this chapter as always,
> 
> Sophie xx

She couldn’t focus.

It was a horrid combination of the building anxiety deep in her gut, which had returned for some reason, the burning sensation slowly taking over her body, and the white cloth which was currently wrapped around Luke’s left hand. It wasn’t something she could quite excuse or explain properly, without factoring in major coincidences, a minor miracle and a vortex through space.

Oddly enough, one of the aforementioned explanations was closer to the answer than she suspected.

Luke however, seemed to be perfectly content on munching on golden raisins in the corner of the room and scribbling down general ideas. His right hand kept darting out towards the packet and bringing back small golden nuggets, before shoving them haphazardly into his mouth. 

If anything, Cass felt like she was going nuts.

She stood up and made her way around the office, slipping out of the door before she could catch sight of Luke. If trying to focus on her work wouldn’t help her, maybe some fresh air might.

As she strolled down the hallway, trying to control her thoughts, she began skimming her hand on the wall beside her. The feeling of the rough and coarse surface gave her some element of peace. She traced and caressed the wall, her hand dragging slowly behind her as she walked aimlessly towards the door.

There was a moment of pause when she got up to it as she pushed up against the exit bar, before she walked through and let the cold air wash over her warm face. She led one foot in front of another into the empty delivery bay and stopped in the centre. She looked around slowly, taking in whatever she could before relaxing in the knowledge that she was alone.

Cass brought her hand up towards her face, examining it once more to see if there was any possible hint of injury. Perhaps a broken or fractured bone, or a small cut with glass she didn’t manage to catch sight of? It was surveyed with a scrutiny she had never given to anything else as she tried her best to see what on earth could have possibly caused the pain to a level she had experienced earlier.

There was no way it was physical damage, and she was sure she’d know if random pains that bad meant psychological damage. Her psychologist had mentioned phantom pains in areas where she was hurt in her nightmares, but her hand was never one of those places.

_Maybe…_ her mind was cast back to the bandage Luke was wearing wrapped around his hand.

The courtyard around her was completely empty save for the sounds of cars and shuffling of people coming off of the streets a few buildings away. There was a beautiful peace to how in that moment, she was completely invisible to anyone except whomever might stroll into the courtyard. 

Her hand began to tingle slightly, as if it had been previously been itchy but it was getting a good scratch. It was almost satisfying. 

She inspected it for any kind of bug bite which could have possibly caused all of the reactions she was getting. Perhaps a very small cut which she hadn’t noticed? She turned and twisted her hand as much as her tendons and bones would possibly allow it without completely breaking or permanently injuring herself. There was no sign of trauma, cuts, bruises of bug bites along its surface whatsoever, only her usual skin with the occasional ink leftover from one doodle or another from day prior. Nothing out of the ordinary whatsoever, except maybe the fact that a few hours prior she had been in excruciating pain.

And then there was Luke. He showed up to work on the same day she had experienced pain in her hand, with a bandage on the exact same hand which had caused her pain. Sure, it could have been a coincidence, even though he hadn’t been wearing the bandage yesterday night when she had last seen him, and sure the universe didn’t like ‘coincidences’, but there wasn’t really a sane explanation to give. Her mind wandered into thoughts of voodoo and magic and spells, hell maybe Luke was in WICCA or something like that.

“Penny for your thoughts?” 

Cass spun around to be faced with a concerned looking tony, lazily leaning against the door frame.

She shoved her hand behind her back as if she had to hide the ‘evidence’ of her slightly less than average thoughts, before realising that it was just her damn hand which Tony had seen on multiple occasions anyway.

“How come Aquaman can control whales? They’re mammals. It makes no sense.” She replied, grabbing the first book quote that came to mind.

Tony frowned and bounced off the door frame before walking slowly towards Cass.

“Ok, quoting The Martian, what's wrong?” Of course he had read the Martian, Tony Stark was basically a more rich version of Mark Watney.

“Nothing.” Cass said a little too quickly to be convincing, whilst wrestling her hand to behind her back once more. Tony eyed her movement suspiciously before taking a couple of tentative steps towards her.

“If nothing’s wrong why did you just hide a completely empty hand behind your back as if its laced with cocaine.”

Cass wanted to say something clever as a retaliation, maybe a dig at Tony, a dig at herself or a dig at someone else, most likely Luke in that situation. But she couldn't. She was tired, and pretty sure she had a mounting fever based on how she had steadily become hotter through the day. Now, she was half convinced that her co-worker was practising some voodoo ritual on her because her hand happened to have started hurting on a day when he came in with a bandage on him. With all of this swirling around her brain, her thoughts had decidedly become a bit jumbled and confused. That coupled with the sense of dread which had been mounting all morning seemed to finally crash down on her and caused what was commonly known as ‘losing it.’

Tears started to form in her eyes before she was even sure what was going on and her face twisted into a frown.

“Nothing’s wrong.” She said, the stress and confusion lacing itself around her words. 

Tony was right in front of her now, trying to offer a soothing presence without actually touching Cass. It was in moments like this when her no-touch thing became a problem, because we don’t tend to notice how much we use touch as a consolation method until it’s been taken away from us. 

“Want to try saying that more convincingly sport? Maybe i’ll believe it this time.” Tony said softly, crouching to look into her eyes.

Cass shook her head, trying to wipe away the traitorous tears which seemed to have decided to spill by their own command.

“Alright, you want to go home?” 

Cass nodded and the tears began to spill faster. 

_No, you stupid idiot, you’re supposed to confront your problems not run from them. She said to herself, a little harsher than usual._

_Shut up, i’m going through something._

_Yeah, how did ‘going through something’ work out last time._

Cass was wringing her sleeves together, trying to ignore the feeling of guilt in her stomach, and still let herself be guided back into the building without letting herself be touched.

She walked slowly through the corridor, trying her best to simply keep one foot falling ahead of the other. She could feel herself starting to shiver, despite the fact that she felt overly warm more than cold. She couldn’t quite understand why exactly she felt as if it was something she needed to hide, but the mounting fever behind her forehead was something she felt as if she shouldn’t divulge.

She slowly slunk back into her office to grab her things in her bag, and wordlessly stuff it all back into her bag. Luke shot her a worried look, his eyes flicking from Cass to Tony, almost begging to know if she was alright. Tony just shrugged, trying to seem nonchalant despite the fact that he was gripping his own hand so tight his knuckles appeared to be white.

Cass gathered her things and slowly walked off, offering Luke only a half smile and a nod as a goodbye, her eyes lingering a little too long on his cut palm. There was red lining to the gaze, as if tears had previously been spilt. She looked as if she was afraid his hand might bite her own, or as if it had previously caused her some form of harm, which was odd considering how normal people tended to react to someone else's cuts.

She slunk away, flanked only by Tony, who gestured to Luke to stay put, before they both slid out of the door towards the building's exit.

Tony drove silently through the city, taking small shortcuts here and there to avoid the mid morning traffic. Cass could tell he was trying to think of something to say and yet he remained completely silent. Cass simply picked at her dead skin around her nails, trying her best to avoid Tony's sideways gazes and glances. She knew how worried her was, and knew how he didn't want to leave her alone for fear that she'd relapse into old and dangerously destructive habits, but truly he had no choice because if cass wanted to be alone, there was nothing you could do about it. The most he could do was tell the kid to watch out for any odd behaviour from her. Maybe “spiderman” could drop in to help her if she needed it.

When he finally pulled up to her apartment block, all he could do was say goodbye as she sidestepped away. The false half smile she was fond of had plastered itself gently on her face, not letting any of the cracks which she so carefully hid come to light.

“Call me in an hour.” he said, trying to catch her eye.

Jesus christ, he was that worried. 

He had only ever asked for hourly calls after her ‘incident,’ to make sure she hadn't relapsed when she finally moved out of Stark towers. Back then he had been far more wary of the little avoidances, and he had eventually relaxed, but to ask for the hour call wasn't just saying he was worried in general, it meant he was worried for her life.

Cass nodded wordlessly and closed the car door behind her.

+++++++++++++++++++++++

 

Loki was beside himself. He had been pacing the room continually since Cass had left, hismknd bombarding him without mercy of thought after thought after thought. Each one becoming increasingly dangerous and unkind to the woman he had just watched leave. He would have brushed it off, if not for the lingering gaze she had cast to his hand as she had left. If he didn't know any better he would have called it accusatory in some way, as if she blamed his hand for the pain she was going through.

Well, technically it was, but she didn't know that.

He kept walking along, letting his fingers interlock and pick and do whatever they needed to, in order to avert the feeling of dread which was steadily rising in his stomach, or perhaps not his own stomach. Yes he had wanted Cass to remember or be linked once again to him in some way, but the way she seemed to resent his hand for whatever seemed be causing her s problem, caused a surge of regret to start racing through his system, like molten lava with a fresh dose of hydrochloric acid.

The burning from earlier still hadn’t quelled, only intensifying with an ever growing migraine which seemed to be normal for loki these days. There was a sort of familiarity to the burn which only furthered his headache as he tried to remember what illness had caused him such a sudden and rapid rise in temperature. 

He glanced yet again at the small device Tony used to communicate with him, only seeing the time rather than any updates from the incessantly babbling billionaire. Of course he never truly wanted to hear from him, however at this time it concerned Cass and her odd behaviour instead of odd details of Tony's private life with whomever he was with. Was it Pepper or the Captain? He could never tell. All he knew is that neither particularly liked him.

He kept pacing, sure that his shoes would eventually wear down a hole into the floor if he kept going, but there was something therapeutic in not keeping still, and allowing himself some sort of a distraction. 

After a few more minutes, his little device buzzed with a message from Tony, claiming to be on his way. Before long another message came. 

_I think there’s something wrong with Cass_

He didn't want to delve into it. Going into it would mean overthinking and overthinking would mean that he was no use to anybody whatsoever. A part of his mind had already begun spinning and grasping at any thought or reason which could be used to explain Tony's text. Of course it could simply be Tony winding him up and pulling on his leg, but from what Loki had seen, Tony cared for Cass just as much as Loki had cared for Sigyn, and was beginning to care for Cass. Albeit in a different context and different sort of way, but it was highly unlikely he'd use her as a joke.

By the time that Tony's car parked itself back in front of the theatre, Loki had already picked half of the dead skin from his fingers off, and a bit of the living too. He was trying to avoid the worried thoughts which were coursing through his brain in double time, with nothing to stop them.

When Tony had finally made his way to Cass’s office, he found a very stressed looking god with what seemed to be the remnants of a phone in his hand, and small pieces of glass pricking into his skin. His every muscle seemed to be tensed enough that if you strung them out they could easily carry a tune. His eyes were wide with horror and it seemed as if he wasn’t even aware of the blood leaking from his hand.

Tony stood in the doorway, surveying the scene without wanting to shock or interrupt, for fear of having a broken mobile phone thrown at his face.

“Hey Loki, you ok there?”

The phone dropped from his hand, landing on the floor with a resonating ‘thump,’ along with small shatterings of minute pieces of glass that followed in a bloodied shower of diamonds. He looked up slowly, his eyes flicking around in confusion and his mouth still parted open in what seemed to be both confusion and disgust. When his eyes finally met Tony’s, his entire body reacted, pushing one foot in front of the other until he was almost upon him.

“We need to go back to Cass’ apartment.” He said, pushing past him.

Tony, stayed still, watching the retreating from of Loki sweeping down the corridor, before Loki stopped and gave a withering glare to Tony, expecting him to follow immediately.

“Now.”


End file.
